"The Future Price of Three-Strikes Sentencing" by
Barbara Brooks
October 7 2001
The public will pay a tremendous penalty for
sentencing nonviolent offenders to a minimum of 25 years to life under the
three-strikes law. The price we will have to pay will be far greater than the
sentences we have placed on these people.
For someday it will all come
back to us with greater force when we release these men and women. Not the same
people who committed the nonviolent offenses, often while under the influence
of drugs, but monsters having had their lives stolen and spent in violent
prisons, where they got an education we can never comprehend. Men and women
having to endure years of loneliness, having lost everything, unjustly
sentenced based on their past behavior rather than their current of-fense.
Small offenses with heinous sentences. They will have nurtured their
anger and hostility for years when the doors finally open for them. Whatever
have we done to our loved ones and ourselves in the name of justice?
Barbara J. Brooks
Fullerton
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Date last modified: 11/24/01.