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11 Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev. 9 (1999-2000)
Why Are Tough on Crime Policies So Popular

handle is hein.journals/stanlp11 and id is 13 raw text is: Why Are Tough on Crime Policies So Popular? by Marc Mauer When Michael Riggs stole a $20 bottle of vitamins from a California supermarket in 1995, it Despite th probably never occurred to him ofpolitical that the U.S. Supreme Court would o oiia eventually consider his act of others shoplifting.' The California Court of Appeals described Mr. Riggs' promote crime as being motivated by homelessness and hunger,2 and his effective drug addiction was apparently h brought upon by the death of his jightting cr young son If Mr. Riggs thought at all of the legal consequences of on crime his actions before he stole the have pn vitamins, it is highly unlikely that he imagined he would receive a costly am sentence of 25 years to life for his crime. However, due to his prior convictions and California's Three Strikes and You're Out law, that is precisely the sentence he received for his offense.' Without the Three Strikes law, Mr. Riggs's crime would have carried a maximum sentence of six months. The lengthy sentence Mr. Riggs received under the Three Strikes law will now cost California taxpayers Marc Mauer is the Assistant Director of The Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., a non-profit organization engaged in research and advocacy on criminal justice policy issues. He received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his M.S.W. from the University of Michigan. Mr. Mauer is the author of numerous publications on criminal justice issues, including Race to Incarcerate (The New Press, 1999). In 1996, he received the Donald Cressey Award for contributions to the field of criminology from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. le dh t( i td about half a million dollars.5 Regardless of whether Mr. Riggs's promises offense is what policymakers and the public had in mind when they aders and adoptedl the Three Strikes policy, his o have sentence is but one example of the often unsound effects of the two- 'hem as decade old movement to get tough on crime. 9ols for The overall impact of the get tough movement on American e, tough society is even more striking than policies individual sentencing outcomes. Along with a host of other societal d to be changes and criminal justice policy choices, the get tough movement unjust. has contributed to the United States' current position as a world leader in the use of incarceration. With an incarceration rate of 600 per 100,000 population as of 1995, the United States was second only to Russia in its use of imprisonment, and locked up its citizens at a rate five to eight times that of most other industrialized nations.6 In the late 1990s, there was considerable debate about the impact of get tough policies on the crime rate. A falling crime rate for much of the decade has led some to conclude that rising incarceration during this period was the primary factor responsible for this trend.' This paper will challenge the notion of such a simplistic, and overplayed, relationship between these two factors and, in the process, provide answers to a perhaps more perplexing question. How is it that despite strong evidence of the relative ineffectiveness of punitive policies on crime control, support for such policies VOLUME 111 1999

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