The Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994

to overturning the three-strikes bill, prompting Justice Minister Andrew Little to abandon
the attempt.
Criticism
Some criticisms of three-strikes laws are that they clog the court system with
defendants taking cases to trial in an attempt to avoid life sentences, and clog jails with
defendants who must be detained while waiting for these trials because the likelihood of
a life sentence makes them a flight risk. Life imprisonment is also an expensive
correctional option, and potentially inefficient given that many prisoners serving these
sentences are elderly and therefore both costly to provide health care services to, and
statistically at low risk of recidivism. Dependents of prisoners serving long sentences
may also become burdensome on welfare services.
Prosecutors have also sometimes evaded the three-strikes laws by processing arrests
as parole violations rather than new offenses, or by bringing misdemeanor charges
when a felony charge would have been legally justified. Likewise, there is potential for
witnesses to refuse to testify, and juries to refuse to convict, if they want to keep a
defendant from receiving a life sentence; this can introduce disparities in punishments,
defeating the goal of treating third-time offenders uniformly. Three-strikes laws have
also been criticized for imposing disproportionate penalties and focusing too much on
street crime rather than white-collar crime.
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