"Punishment and Democracy is an analysis of the politics and impact of "get tough" criminal sentencing legislation. Franklin Zimring, Gordon Hawkins, and Sam Kamin examine the origins of the law in California, compare it to other crackdown laws, and analyze large samples of offenders arrested in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco in the year before and the two years after the law went into effect.

They show that the Three Strikes law was a significant development in criminal justice policy-making, not only at the state level, but also at the national level. The study presents compelling evidence, however, that the new regime has been enormously over-rated as a crime prevention measure. The book also examines the new politics of criminal punishment in the United States and the proper role of citizen preferences in the governance of criminal punishment.

In its scrutiny of California's Three Strikes law, Punishment and Democracy extracts crucial lessons about democracy and criminal justice in America."--BOOK JACKET.