Pubdate: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 Source: Oakland Tribune (CA) Contact: Associated Press EXPERTS QUESTION EFFECTIVENESS OF 'THREE STRIKES' LAW SACRAMENTO -- Midway through Dan Lungren's eight-year tenure as California's top cop~ the state adopted a law with the power to send a pizza thief away for life. Now, as the Republican seeks to become governor, he credits the 1994 "Three Strikes" law he helped draft for his proudest achievement: a drop in the state's crime rate to levels not seen since the 1960s. "There is no single event, activity, decision, law, judgment, in this period of time that I call the three strikes era -- Other than three strikes -- that could explain the tremendous acceleration in the drop in crime," Lungren said on one occasion. Experts are skeptical. "It's a silly statement to say one thing is causing this," said James Austin, a criminologist with the Natural Council on Crime and Delinquency, who has studied the state's Three Strikes law. The crime-fighting claim hasn't seemed to catch fire with the public or help him chip away at opponent Gray Davis' narrow but persistent lead in most polls. Lungren has run TV ads saying Davis opposed the law but in fact, the year the Legislature passed three strikes legislation, Davis, who was then controller, supported a slightly different version of the bill. State laws toughened California's three strikes law was one of the first and toughest of similar measures since enacted in 24 states. But more than 1,000 bills toughening the state criminal code were passed by the Legislature in the decade before the Three Strikes law. Cities used federal dollars to hire more cops and set up prevention programs like midnight basketball. The crime rate had been falling before the law took effect, And since 3994, the crime rate has fallen in counties such as Alameda and San Francisco where prosecutors seldom use the Three Strikes law, suggesting that other factors are at work, criminal experts say. "Probably the greatest reason why the crime rate is going down may have something to do with the economy," said Cecil Canton, a professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento. The law took aim at repeat offenders or "mini-crime waves" responsible for almost 18 times as many crimes as the typical petty criminal, according to a Rand Corp. study. On the stump, Lungren is fond of saying it doesn't even take "three strikes" to put a bad guy behind bars for a long time. A felon with one prior "strike" for a violent or serious crime faces a sentence of double the normal term for any new felony. One with a record of two prior violent or serious felony crimes must be sentenced to 25 years to life for the third "strike," which can be any felony. Pizza thief gets served California's law made national head-lines when a Judge in Los Angeles sentenced a man to 25 years to life for stealing a slice of pepperoni pizza be-cause he had prior convictions for rob-beD' and attempted robbery. The state Supreme Court later decided that Judges could ignore prior strikes, and defendants sentenced under the law could ask for new sentencing hearings. Last year, the Judge eased the sentence, ruling that the man will be eligible for parole next year. A majority of the more than 40,000 inmates sentenced under the law were convicted of nonviolent crimes such as drug possession, theft and burglary, Analysts with the nonpartisan Rand Corp, have tracked the law since it was adopted, compared California's crime rate to other states without a Three Strikes law and determined that the law itself was not responsible for the drop in crime, No essential difference "What we've seen so far, there's no essential difference," said Peter Green-wood, director of Rand's criminal Justice program. Greenwood and others say the law could have had a far bigger impact had there been enough jails, prisons, prosecutors and money to keep the criminals moving through the system and put away for life. They cite a number of reasons the law alone has not reduced crime, even though it's given credit for doing so by Lungren and a host of other politicians. - --- Checked-by: Don Beck