Justice and policy development California’s three strikes law

Abstract

Crowded modern era communities require laws and rules to maintain order and safety. Naturally, these rules often stem from our beliefs and centuries of traditions in addition to empirical studies to uphold values that our communities praise. As one of these values, justice, is emphasized in the contexts of most religions, for example (Islam, Christianity and Judaism). These beliefs also suggest rehabilitation before punitive measurement. There is no religion that recommends injustice. However, due to some failures, there are occurrences or policies that despite our traditions and beliefs condemn or empirical studies discourage, produce unjust outcomes. Hence, justice is vital for each state and community to prevent the eventual disruption of both of them. In this matter, governments use policy development as a tool to solve problems with justice; nevertheless the process is complex by its nature. Disregarding its complexity may result with policy failure and unjust results. This study aims to find out whether a crime fighting policy that received massive public support but has no empirical background has been a success in crime prevention and in the distribution of justice. For this, it looks into an infamous policy, California`s „Three Strikes and You‟re Out‟ law as a case study. Findings so far have shown that especially until the 2012 amendment, the implementation of California‟s Three Strikes law provided disappointing results. This indicates that, the founding of the law was based more on emotional reactions rather than empirical studies and that the foundation of the policy also disregarded known experiences and traditions/values in crime fighting and upholding justice.