Pacific McGeorge "Three Strikes" Conference Calls for Blue Ribbon Commission to Fix a 'Broken' Sentencing System
April 20, 2004For Immediate Release - April 20, 2004
Contact: Mike Vitiello, 916.739.7115
Conferees plead for the governor’s Help
Some of the most respected and notable sentencing reform scholars in America joined forces to call for wide-ranging penal code reforms after debate at last weekend’s first-of-its-kind “Three Strikes” conference at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law.
“The state penal code is broken and it needs to be fixed,” said Pacific McGeorge Professor Michael Vitiello, whose law review articles have criticized “Three Strikes” and other current sentencing provisions.
“California has piled one sentencing scheme on top of another and now has no coherent sentencing policy. Adding crimes and numerous sentencing enhancement provisions makes the penal code Byzantine. The state would be well-served by establishing a blue ribbon commission to bring coherence to substantive criminal law provisions by examining and rationalizing criminal sentencing provisions,” Vitiello said.
He added, “The governor has promised to blow up boxes and has shown a willingness to take on hard issues such as prison conditions, we believe that he should go one step further and create a commission that could dramatically improve the way justice is meted out in California.”
The weekend conference, “Sentencing Practice & Policy: Dollars and Sense,” brought together leading legal scholars including Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley, George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley, Erwin Chemerinsky, University of Southern California, and University of Colorado law professor Kevin Reitz, one of the world’s foremost authorities on American criminology.
Conference participants agreed that the cost of “Three Strikes” far exceeds any benefit that the law may produce. They argue that it requires very long sentences, often for non-violent petty thieves or drug users, who do not represent the kind of threat of harm that “Three Strikes” was designed to prevent. The law will lead to increasing costs as those prisoners age, speakers argue, adding that the cost of incarcerating older prisoners is about three times as expensive as the cost of housing younger prisoners. “Three Strikes” and similar sentencing reform could lead to significant savings without increasing the risk to public safety, they concluded.
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