- Develop a policy regarding the three strikes laws in the State of California. Address the following in your policy:
- What alternatives would be placed in the law to give the state prosecutor more freedom to manipulate the third strike?
- Many prosecutors load up charges against defendants to force a plea bargain. What can be done to limit or prevent this practice?
- Will your policy allow multiple counts arising from the same incident to count as multiple strikes? (For instance, a man arrested for aggravated robbery because of the use of a weapon is charged with aggravated robbery and a felony gun possession charge. Should that count as 1 strike or 2?)
- If one of the alternatives was supervised probation, how would you convince the public that it would be more cost-effective for the person to be supervised than incarcerated?
- Show the public where you would be saving money by not incarcerating the perpetrator.
- If brought up in the legislature to be an amendment to the law, could this be grandfathered in to help older inmates?
- Could this have a backlash from the public, or would they approve? How? Why?
- Once you are finished with the policy, draft an executive summary of the policy to be used for political decision making.
- Use 610 scholarly resources to support the provisions of your policy. Dictionaries and encyclopedias are not scholarly sources. Look at federal and state legislation and court cases.
