The 3-Strikes law is one of the government's ultimate intrusions into
people's freedoms.
We hear the Republicans say that they are going to get the government off of people's
backs--and yet, in the ultimate hypocrisy, they push forward laws like the 3-Strikes law.
Society is becoming increasingly "controlled" by new laws and greater
punishments. There are day-time curfews for teenagers, zero-tolerance rules at schools,
mandatory school uniforms, a ban on sports before school, anti-smoking laws, proposed
governmental regulation of the internet, increased banning of adult businesses, draconian
penalties against drug use--almost anything that resembles a "vice" is becoming
regulated. Alcohol would probably be on the list, but we already have seen the failures of
the prohibition laws.
When society comes to overwhelmingly control its people by brute force and harsh
punishments--people become less inclined toward learning self-discipline and self control.
Thomas Jefferson said the government is best which governs the least, because its people
discipline themselves.
In a "controlled" society, the rules about "life" are made by
others and not by the individual. The "vices" of life become defined by the
state and anything not a "vice" is considered fine to do by the individual. If a
person can get away with telling lies and cheating others legally, it becomes fair game in
the way "life" is played. The game becomes one of trying to "get away"
with society's rules and the winners are defined as the ones who "got away"
without getting punished. Thoughts of a "common humanity" or "helping
others" are thought of as bizarre and not part of the "game."
The 3-Strikes law is the epitome of state control. The 3-Strikes law gives punishments
to crimes that deserve to be crimes--we are not arguing against decriminalization of the
criminal acts defined under the 3-Strikes law (although there are some good arguments
sympathetic to decriminalization of the drug laws). But the danger of the 3-Strikes law is
that it opens the door for ALL "criminal" punishments to become harsher--even
the new laws that are being proposed. When the penalties at any level are increased, there
is a natural sliding scale that will be pushed by judges and politicians to increase the
penalties for all crimes.
If a judge gives "25 years to life" for a petty theft with two priors, how
can that same judge feel about giving the next petty theft case only a slap on the wrist?
If a burglar can get a "life sentence," how will the judge feel about a
shoplifter who was caught stealing the same value of property? If a shoplifter gets a
harsh sentence, how will a judge feel about teenager who breaks a day-curfew penalty? If a
day-curfew penalty gets a harsh sentence, how will a judge feel about someone who makes a
supposedly obscene phone call? If obscene phone callers and day-curfew violators receive
harsh penalties, what about owners of dogs that violate leash laws?
The freedoms that supposedly the United States stands for are being threatened and
many people are blind to the reality of it. More and more people are being put in jails
and prisons for longer terms and laws like the 3-Strikes law are leading the way. Is this
a society we really want?
The following are some statistics and comments from books and articles on how the
3-Strikes law is leading the way for us to have a "state controlled society."
PLEASE SEND US NEW DATA AND ARTICLES IF YOU HAVE THEM.
Opinion piece against government protections.
"To be truly free, Pietro Bellusch once said, takes more determination, courage,
introspection and restraint than to be in shackles. In America, we are free, but there is
a diminishing number of Americans who are willing to pay the price that true freedom
exacts; the price is self-discipline and self-governance. The strength to motivate or
restrain ourselves rather than being motivated or restrained by external forces is what
will determine whether we and our children will remain a free people." By Behesha
Grist, OCRegister, 12/8/97.
Zero tolerance rules at schools taken to extremes.
Jesse Katz, a Times staff writer, wrote an article showing the extreme examples of
what happens when "zero tolerance" rules are taken to the limit. Included
in the article were stories of a student who was expelled from school for two weeks after
giving his French teach a bottle of wine.
Katz states, "The impulse to stand firm, to reduce all choices to right or wrong,
permeates more than just school campuses these days. Zero tolerance has become a
mantra for the '90s--a call for order, for discipline, for a society that punishes bad
behavior, instead of rewarding it with a move deal."
"Zero tolerance is applied in Fortune 500 corporations and in the U.S. armed
forces, in churches and courtrooms and shopping malls, by Los Angeles County restaurant
inspectors and by police on the streets of Disneyland. There is zero tolerance for
sexual harassment, for racial discrimination and for hazing, zero tolerance for graffiti,
for gang attire and for jaywalking, zero tolerance for public imbibing on the Fourth of
July and for shooting off guns on New Year's Eve." LATimes, 3/1/98.
Curfews, dress codes and other restrictions being imposed on
kids.
LA Times reporter Lynn Smith reviews the news restrictions imposed on kids and says it
all with the title of the article: "With all the curfews, dress codes and other
restrictions being imposed on kids, are we raising a generation of upstanding citizens--or
future leaders of a police state?"
For Nicole Eklund, a 16-year-old cheerleader from Simi Valley, coming of age has meant
getting used to police dogs sniffing for drugs at her school locker, dress codes
proscribing bare midriffs, and an official 10 p.m. curfew seven days a week.
Leaders in her community--a suburb so benign she calls it
"Anytown, USA"--have expelled a kindergartner for bringing a pink squirt gun to
school and are considering, as state legislators plan to, a daytime curfew for people
under age 18.
What's more, living in California, she now is subject to a $75
fine and community service if she ever smokes a cigarette, even if her parents give it to
her. Friends applying for their first driver's licenses this year likely will be
restricted from driving late at night or with other kids. Those who engage in vandalism or
graffiti may not be able to obtain licenses at all and may have to stay home looking at
blank TV screens--if their parents can program a V-chip.
An estimated 35 regional jurisdictions, including the city and county of Los Angeles,
have daytime curfews, also known as anti-truancy laws, requiring children to stay off the
streets during school hours. The majority of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School
District have implemented policies requiring students to wear uniforms.
Complaints have begun to surface. Some fear that blanket policies such as curfews
allow too much discretion for officials who enforce them, opening up the door for racial
discrimination. Others say good kids get swept up in the net.
Parents in central Los Angeles, for instance, were shocked in June when
13-year-old students on an errand for their teacher were handcuffed in the hall by armed
police looking for miscreants.
Even in family-friendly Monrovia, a group of parents is
suing the city over its award-winning anti-truancy ordinance. Rosemary Harrahill, a
home-schooling mother who has joined the litigation, says two of her children have been
stopped a total of 22 times by police. Like others, they have been issued fluorescent
identity cards to show police. Harrahill likens the principle to Nazi restrictions in
prewar Poland. "They've targeted a class of people and they're children." LATimes, 1/1/98.
"Drug War" a pretext for social control
In an opinion piece, Alexander Cockburn reviewed evidence how historically the drug
wars in the past have really been a war on poor, lower classes.
"Domestically, the 'drug war' has always been a pretext for social control,
going back to the racist application of drug laws against Chinese laborers in the
recession of the 1870s when these workers were viewed as competition for the dwindling
number of jobs available. The main users, middle-class white men and women taking
opium in liquid form as 'tonics,' weren't harassed. But the Chinese Exclusion Act
allowed Chinese opium addicts to be arrested and deported."
"In the 1930s, the racist head of the federal Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs, Harry Anslinger, was renaming hemp as 'marijuana' to associate it with
Mexican laborers and claiming that marijuana could 'arouse in blacks and Hispanics a state
of menacing fury or homicidal attack.'"
"As he was so often, President Nixon was helpfully explicit in his private
remarks. H.R. Haldeman recorded in his diary a briefing by the president in 1969,
prior to launching of the war on drugs: 'Nixon emphasized that you have to face the fact
the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that
recognizes this while not appearing to." LATimes, 6/11/98.
Please send questions or comments to factsla@sbcglobal.net.
Everything on this web site can be distributed to the general public, reprinted, or
reposted without permission of Families to Amend California's 3-Strikes.
Date last modified: 7/21/98.
