Prison

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jurisdiction by preventing sentencing judges from considering a full range of mitigating factors in a defendant's profile, including the defendant's role in the offense or likelihood of committing a future infraction.

2 . Strategically reduce "three-strikes" laws for non-violent offenders.

Although twenty-six states have passed "three-strikes" laws for violent offenders since 1993, California's 1994 "three strikes" ruling punishes minor, non-violent crimes with the penalty of twenty-five years to life. Nearly 4,000 prisoners in the state of California are now serving life sentences for a third strike offense that was neither violent nor serious. This figure represents more than 40 percent of California's 8,500 third-strike offenders. This November, California voters will have a chance to revise the "three strikes" law through a ballot-measure -- Proposition 36 -- which, if passed, will eliminate life sentences for offenders whose third strike is neither serious nor ...

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of people in prison and then adjusts the U.S. Census counts prior to redistricting." California, Delaware, Maryland, and New York have already adopted this important practice.

5 . Make full employment a domestic policy goal.

In his 2009 book entitled Punishing the Poor, U.C. Berkeley sociologist Loic Wacquant demonstrates that 60 percent of those incarcerated over the last ten years were living at or below 50 percent of the poverty line at the time of their arrest. Wacquant further argues that roughly 70 percent of those sentenced over the last ten years were unemployed at the time of their arrest. The message is clear: unemployment in the formal labor market substantially ...

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