The Los Angeles Times has provided front page coverage for college law students who have found their calling in life: to spring repeat offenders from prison who are serving time under California’s Three Strikes law.
By definition these are repeat offenders who have historically been in and out of prison their entire adult lives and must have at least 2 prior serious or violent convictions in their past. While it seems obvious that these are offenders who were already serving life terms on the installment plan, 3 Strikes just took out the cost of repeated processing and most importantly the expense of new victims. This is somehow balanced by the savings that felons are out during these rather short crime sabbaticals.
The Los Angeles Times has historically worked rather hard to defeat 3 Strikes. It has supported measures to undo 3 Strikes and given credit to partial half baked studies that try to cook numbers to yield less positive results. The Los Angeles Times has also aligned its political support behind candidates that promise the softest use of crime laws thus assuring and perpetuating the continuing violence and crime in Los Angeles that accounts for approximately 50% of all of California’s crime statistics each year.
These students are basing their cases on classic tried and true tactics of childhood neglect that, in turn, are responsible for their adult criminality. “No one is responsible for their acts; they are only a product of the society that has made them.” This of course begs the question, “When someone gets hurt or killed because a dangerous animal gets out at the zoo – which is more responsible, the animal or the person that let them out?”