wasn’t caused by an absence of law and
order. It was caused by too much law
and order: so many fathers and brothers
and cousins in prison that people in the
neighborhood had come to see the law
as their enemy. Brownsville was on the
right side of the inverted U. In California
in 1989, there were seventy-six thousand
people behind bars. Ten years later,
largely because of Three Strikes, that
number had more than doubled. On a per
capita basis, by the turn of the twenty-
first century, California had between
five and eight times as many people in
prison as did Canada or Western
Europe. Don’t you think it’s possible
that Three Strikes turned some
neighborhoods in California into the
darren dugan
(Darren Dugan)
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