The Prisioners of Panic

My final blog is on this Sunday's January 6, 2008 Opinion Editorial section. The tone is informative and annoyed, so keep the tone in mind as you read in order to fully respond.
The piece published in the Los Angeles Times "Prisoners of Panic" written by Joe Domanick discusses the situation that California is now facing due to the drastically overcrowded prison system. In this article, Domanick points that the media hype and political pandering that started with the crack scare of the 1980's has backfired. Backfired because of the quick to action to be tough on crime especially in the poverty stricken communities congress became overly tough on crack crimes for fear it that if not stop would spread to their influential communities. what should have minimum sentences if convicted for crack possession would for example get you as much time and having been convicted of possessing tons of pure cocaine (coke). Simply put, you would make more money and get the same amount of time if you were a coke dealer rather than a small time crack dealer.
In fact, in the 1990's congress enacted the three strike laws to show that they were tough on crimes. The three strike law simple stated that if you were convicted of three felony crimes no matter how petty it is you would be sentence to twenty five years to life. Prosecutors ultimately began to threw thousands of people in prison sentencing them for twenty five years to life without weighing the punishment to the crime thus causing a mad flux's of prison overcrowding. A prison system that has California's Governor Schwarzenegger contemplating the idea of letting 22,000 thousand about 13% of the inmate population out early. An idea that hopefully won't repeat what has happen in the past, politician's panicking to pass ill thought out bad laws that will ruin many young lives.