The effect of three-strikes legislation on serious crime in California [An article from: Journal of Criminal Justice]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Criminal Justice, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Using county-level data from California for the years 1989-2000, this study explored the effect of three-strikes legislation on serious crime. It improved on most previous research in this area by controlling for how often prosecutors charged offenders under the three-strikes statute. Preliminary findings suggested that larceny was reduced by way of deterrence resulting from three-strikes and that all index crimes were reduced by way of incapacitation. Once county-specific trends were controlled for, however, the deterrent and incapacitative effects of three-strikes legislation disappeared altogether.