[SENTINEL]

"The only thing wrong with three strikes is the Drug War."

The "three strikes" means three felonies. I may be mistaken, having no personal experience in this matter, but I believe that only drug growers and dealers are charged with felonies. This law does not intend to put away Beavis and Butthead for life for getting caught three times smoking pot.

This law was passed by the Californians (SENTINEL=former Californian) to CONTROL THE LIBERAL JUDGES, not necessarily the criminals.

[eno_]

There are some issues of threshold: Lately felonies have been cheapened to the point where the stuff in your garage is probably a federal environmental felony. Do away with "trash" felonies and that would be a good reform of three strikes.

It isn't just users that clog up the jails. Trafficing, while it is widely viewed as a nasty crime, doesn't affect people outside the drug culture very much. And the definition of trafficing has also been cheapened to give prosecutors more leverage in extracting plea bargains. Pot growers are generally the quietest people in the neighborhood. If you are trying to minimize violent and property crime, it is wasteful to lock them up.

The goal is to put the criminals that break into houses, rob stores, and mug people into jail until they are too old for the game. Everything else, like most drug and white-collar crime, that fills up an already very large prison system is just extra cost to the taxpayer without much benefit. Reforming this stuff would not be an issue if the costs were not so large and the prison population so large. But as it is, it needs more focus.