My state legistator "meathead", yes he is a Polish person and someone's son-in-law, was all for this legislation until he got the word from his constituents including me. I mean the operative word here is "see". I won't even bother going into the potential abuses of this type of legislation, I'll just leave it up to your imagination.
Now our other state legislator from this county has decided to support this legislation---even though he is about to retire---many think this is to clean up a political favor. This legislator strikes me as a bicycle seat sniffer, because the only thing I've "seen" out of the guy is that he has spent a lot of time sniffing around Oberlin College President Nancy Dye.
Your email pal,
Tom L.
Liza Featherstone wrote:
> sorry that WAS a slight exaggeration. but in most states they haven't been
> implemented very much. and be careful with the much-hyped pizza story --
> turned out to be pretty misleading, like the guy only stole a pizza but his
> other offenses were armed robbery, etc. the right wing had a field day when
> that came out.
>
> Liza
>
> ----------
> >From: Paul Henry Rosenberg <rad at gte.net>
> >To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> >Subject: Re: incarceration unsustainable?
> >Date: Tue, Mar 9, 1999, 9:59 PM
> >
>
> >Liza Featherstone wrote:
> >
> >> though-- a recent national study (done by the Sentencing Project I think)
> >> showed that of the many states that have recently passed 3-strike laws, only
> >> California actually uses them
> >
> >Not exactly. It's just that California has the most wildly
> >indiscriminate form of 3-strikes law (passed as an initiative, natch),
> >under which folks have gotten 25-to-life sentences for stealing pizzas &
> >such.
> >
> >Nonetheless, there is some discretion at the country prosecutor level,
> >and it turns out that those who use it least have seen the largest
> >reductions in crime, one of the major fincings in a just-released report
> >"Striking Out: The Failure of California's 'Three Strikes and You're
> >Out' Law", just out [released on the web 1 week ago today] from the
> >Justice Policy Institute at http://www.cjcj.org/jpi/strikingout.html
> >
> >--
> >Paul Rosenberg
> >Reason and Democracy
> >rad at gte.net
> >
> >"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"