THE San Jose Mercury News' praise of the "three strikes" law is unwarranted ("Sentencing law appears to have met its goal," Page 1A, Dec. 28).

In evaluating the effectiveness of the law, you leave out a key piece of evidence that discounts its conclusion: There is no statistical correlation between the number or rate of people imprisoned and the crime rate. The "three strikes" law has not reduced the crime rate by "keeping the most dangerous criminals off of the street." Some may point out that the crime rate has dropped since the law was implemented in 1994, but they fail to mention that the crime rate started dropping drastically several years before "three strikes" was around.

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