Maybe, Just Maybe

Maybe this new “three strikes” law will work. Maybe the critics are all wrong. Maybe prosecutors and cops and judges and criminal lawyers and RAND consultants know less about the nuances of our finicky judicial system than Sacramento politicians and the enraged survivors of violent crime.

Maybe a law that puts away three-time felons, violent or otherwise, for life won’t bankrupt the state budget. Maybe the governors and legislators and taxpayers of tomorrow--who, because of the mechanics of bond financing, must pay for this effort--will know how to service the debt and still make ends meet. Maybe they can raise taxes, cut corners, sell campuses--something.

Or maybe felons will heed Gov. Pete Wilson’s advice and “start finding a new line of work.” Maybe people who murder and rape and commit other crazy acts still can make rational, pragmatic decisions. And maybe they will decide to go straight now, or at least go to Nevada or some other state. If so, maybe those projections of 80,000 new prisoners and $20 billion in new prisons will prove to be bunk.

And maybe the anecdotal experience of states like Ohio and Washington, which traveled this road and found it mined with unexpected consequences, are not applicable. Maybe concern about the cost of running homes for geriatric convicts long past their criminal prime misses the point. Maybe the law won’t snare nonviolent, two-bit crooks along with the murderers. Maybe it doesn’t matter if it does.

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Maybe those who fret about societal implications are misguided. Maybe a state has no “soul,” and thus cannot lose it. Maybe the governor was correct Monday when he compared the bill to other great California moments. Maybe it doesn’t matter that a state that once made deserts bloom and quality education a birthright now stands to become a world model for warehousing criminals, second to none. Aqueducts, colleges, prisons--maybe they’re all the same.

Maybe it’s true: Brutal times require brutal measures. Maybe there is no place anymore for compassion or redemption; like they say, were the victims shown forgiveness? Maybe the New Testament needs to be rethought. Maybe an eye for an eye is still the ticket. Maybe next we should consider amputating the offensive member.

Maybe Gov. Wilson will admit now that his earlier vision of “preventive government” was but a pipe dream. Maybe government cannot lead, but only react, a captive of trends and events. Maybe criminal behavior cannot be prevented, only punished. Maybe any attempt to understand and root out whatever it is that creates gangbangers and child molesters and bank robbers is just wasted motion. And it wouldn’t help to invest $20 billion on schools or jobs programs or beat cops, instead of prisons--maybe.

By all means, the slaughter must stop, but maybe someone can explain the timing of this “three strikes” stampede. Maybe the hundreds who fell, year after year, on the streets of Los Angeles weren’t the right kind of victims to capture Sacramento’s attention, to galvanize the state for a round of rough retribution. Maybe they weren’t “poster child” material. Maybe their parents didn’t give good quotes.

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And maybe this won’t prove to be one more case of politics as usual, more meaningless huffing and puffing on the reelection railroad. Maybe Assemblyman Phil Isenberg was wrong when he told his colleagues: “I’ve been here 12 years, and I’ve watched us pass a whole lot of criminal law stuff, and I’ve voted for almost all of it. And let me tell you my impression. We don’t have a plan. We don’t have a theory. We don’t have an approach. We don’t have a program. We pile bill on bill, sentence on sentence. It is simply reacting. . . . Those of you who plan to make a longer tenure in public office than I will have to deal with the consequences.”

Maybe the fact that a decade of anti-crime legislation has swollen the prison population by a hundred thousand or so, while failing to make the streets seem a bit safer, is irrelevant. Maybe this is one reform attempt that won’t boomerang. Maybe the convicts let out the back door to make room for the strikeout cases won’t come back to haunt us. Yes, maybe we’d better forget that part of the Polly Klaas tragedy--that, but for the unintended consequences of previous get-tough reforms, her killer might never have been unloosed from prison in the first place.

No, maybe this one will work. It’s a shot in the dark, motivated by fear and anger and manipulated by politicians who feed on such emotions, just as crooks feed on unlocked doors. Shots in the dark can yield messy results. But maybe we’ll get lucky. And maybe not.