Critical Research Essay: Annotated Bibliography

            Compared to my last essay, I didn’t like where I went with it and felt that I chose something that wasn’t as interesting to me. I decided to go on a different track and research something that I was more interested in. For my research paper,  I  instead want to write about the Three-Strikes Laws, which is a series of laws that have been enacted across the country based on the belief that harsher sentencing laws, on top of already established mandatory sentencing laws, deter crime and discourage future criminal behavior. These laws are to help avoid the possibility of repeat offenders who have committed a “serious” violent felony out on parole and lead to a life sentence. While these laws seemed to be coming from a place where statistics showed that the crime rate in the United States had been increasing since 1980’s, by repeat offenders, the application of these stricter laws seemed necessary. However, my stance on the implementation of Three-Strikes laws are negatively impacting society instead of helping. Some of the negative effects that I want to discuss include targeting of minority offenders and impacting recidivism and crime rates negatively. I think that I am going to try and collect a decent amount of statistics to be able to back up the negative impacts of the Three-strikes laws as well as getting stories about the injustice that it has caused in this country. I want to write this research paper because I feel that people outside of the criminal justice sphere don’t know a lot about this topic and feel that it is necessary for people to understand how these legal actions that were passed in the 90’s still effects people today.

1)Dean, Nicole. “Changing California’s 65% Recidivism Rate Is 100% Possible.” A Medium Corporation, Medium, 17 Mar. 2016, medium.com/@PlantingJustice/changing-california-s-65-recidivism-rate-is-100-possible-d4ac713a2da7

For this source, it is a discussion about California’s incarceration problem. It discusses the “500% increase in the prison population that occurred between 1975–1995 is due in part to the state’s dismal recidivism rate, which has been the highest in the nation for decades. About 65% of people who leave a California State Prison end up back inside in less than one year.” Which is important because it is one of the states that has had this type of legislation passed and eventually reformed but still had the largest impact on convict populations before and after these laws were passed. What makes this source credible is the sheer amount of data that has been collected by professors from acclaimed universities as well as data released from the state of California. I plan on using this source to help back discuss recidivism rates, especially looking at California, which had been impacted immensely by these mandatory sentencing laws.

2) Ardaiz, James A. “California’s Three Strikes Law: History, Expectations, Consequences.” McGeorge Law Review, vol. 32, no. 1, 2000, p. 1-36. HeinOnline, https://heinonline-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/mcglr32&i=11.

This is my academic source, which I received off of HeinOnline which is a database which has everything you need that is law related. This article is reliable because it has been through peer review. It has also been published by the McGeorge Law Review. This article discusses the what these laws were intended for and their overall impact on the justice system. I’m using information which discusses the rationale and purposes of the Three-Strikes laws while using his balance of understanding what is actually a deterrent of crime, which is a value system, and not the criminal justice system. Ardaiz, further supports his arguments and critiques of these laws by data from the criminal justice institute from the years following the enactment of these laws.