Three strikes you're out

The way the legal system in California operates against those who infract upon their legal codes of conduct. If you break the law once, you get a normal to lenient sentencing, the second time you of course get a little tougher a sentence, however the way this works is that if you are caught breaking the law a third time. you go to jail for life. This is supposed to be a decentive to breaking the law, however what it manages to do is catch those in susceptable social conditions and condemn their lives without any consideration to the conditions that created their need to break the laws in the first place.

It has been said some people have gone to jail forever just because they stole a snickers bar. It just happening to be the 3rd one they've stolen in their lifetime with the bad habit of kleptomania.

This creates not a civilized society, but one in a severe military state that enslaves those less fortunate. I suppose this is better than Sun Tzu's suggestion of killing any who disobey the King.

Progressive comedians have suggested an amendment to the Three Strikes You're Out law, known in Florida as 10-20-Life:

Four balls and you walk. If you are stopped for driving while black four times, the police can never stop you again.

Jesse Jackson picked up this theme in an address to United We Stand:

Hospitals are closing. Families are disintegrating. To that we have a quick answer: Three strikes and you're out, rather than four balls and you're on. If the crime is vicious enough, if the person is sick enough, one strike is enough. For Susan Smith, one strike is enough. For those who bombed the building in Oklahoma, that's enough. For those who bombed the building in New York, one strike is enough. Judges already have that power.

But the vision of our country really must be four balls and you're on. It must not just be about lock-up, but lift-up. Pre-natal care and Head Start, ball one; an adequately funded public education, ball two; remarkable skill and access to college, ball three; and a job, ball four. Let's put America back to work and lift our children up, not just lock them up.

SOURCE: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8569/jackson.html