When justice listens and reforms

In 1992, 18-year-old Kimber Reynolds was killed in a robbery when assailants snatched her bag and shot her. A year later, Polly Klaas, 12, was abducted from her home and killed. Both incidents happened in California, in the United States; both were committed by recidivists who were in prison for serious crimes, but were out on parole. Kimber’s father, Mike Reynolds, was naturally outraged that a criminal with a demonstrable propensity to prey on the population was allowed free. He began a campaign to stop such offenders who had been held guilty of committing crimes in their tracks. The ‘Three Strikes Law’ was thus born – a sentencing scheme intended to “keep murderers, rapists, and child molesters behind bars, where they belong”.

The law, enacted in 1994, imposed a life sentence for almost any crime, without consideration for how minor the offence was, provided the defendant had two prior convictions for crimes defined as ‘serious’ or ‘violent’ by the California Penal Code. However, soon statistics of shocking convictions for minor offences began to show up. The California Department of Corrections figures showed that the law disproportionately affected minority populations across the state. More than 45% of inmates serving life sentences under the law were African-American. It became apparent that the ‘Three Strikes’ law was also applied disproportionately against mentally ill and physically disabled defendants.

An economic fallout was that California’s State Auditor estimated that the law added over $19 billion to
the state’s prison budget. Worse, criminologists were in consensus that life sentences for non-violent repeat offenders did not have any impact whatsoever on improving public safety.

Eighteen years after the law came to be passed, in 2012, California voters enacted the Three Strikes Reform Act (Proposition 36) to address the harsh and unintended consequences of the sentencing law. Proposition 36 eliminated life sentences for non-serious, non-violent crimes and established a procedure for inmates sentenced to life in prison for minor third-strike crimes to petition the court for reduced sentences. Proposition 36 was essentially the first voter initiative since the Civil War to reduce the sentences of inmates currently behind bars.

Its impact? Over 1,000 prisoners were released in the first eight months. Of these, recidivism (tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend) rates dived to less than 2% – a number well below state and national averages. Proposition 36 had saved Californian taxpayers between $10 and $13 million, and if the reform were applied to all eligible inmates, about $1 billion could be saved over the next ten years.

A 1966 description of a habitual offender by the Supreme Court of India, in Dhanji Ram, said: “...the suspect may or may not have been convicted of any crime. Even apart from any conviction, there may be reasonable grounds for believing that he is a habitual offender.” On the basis of such belief, police could initiate a slew of measures to curb a person’s liberties. All three terms – recidivist, history-sheeter, and habitual offender – while not meaning the same, have been used interchangeably by members of the bar.

Cycle of prejudice

However, in recent times, the Supreme Court has expressed compassion for oppressed classes who are mindlessly added to the list of habitual offenders. In the 2024 Amanatullah Khan case, authored by the present CJI Surya Kant, it was held that there ought to be no mechanical entries for history-sheeters. On the issue of police treatment, the Court held: “It is alleged that the police diaries are maintained selectively of individuals belonging to Vimukta Jatis based solely on caste bias, in a somewhat similar manner as happened in colonial times. We must bear in mind that these preconceived notions often render them ‘invisible victims’ due to prevailing stereotypes associated with communities, which may often impede their right to live a life with self-respect.”

A three-judge bench headed by then CJI Dhananjaya Chandrachud held in the Sukanya Shanta case while dealing with habitual offenders and treatment meted out to them while in jail – “Simply because they happen to hail from socially, economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds along with those belonging to backward communities, SC and ST... but there are some studies available in the public domain that reveal a pattern of an unfair, prejudicial and atrocious mindset.”

The two largest democracies of the world have been changing their perspective on recidivists by displaying a more humane face, thus paving the way for the reformation of those who may have displayed criminal tendencies on an occasion or two.

(The writer is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India and a former legal advisor to the Government of Karnataka)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.