David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

argument that would end up pulling Mike
Reynolds and his claims for Three
Strikes into the center of two decades of
controversy. What if the relationship
between punishment and crime was also
an inverted U? In other words, what if—
past a certain point—cracking down on
crime stopped having any effect on
criminals and maybe even started to
make crime worse?
At the time Three Strikes was passed,
no one considered this possibility. Mike
Reynolds and his supporters assumed
that every extra criminal they locked up,
and every extra year they added to the
average sentence, would bring about a
corresponding decrease in crime.
“Back then, even first-degree murder