Fences are made of different heights and materials, for different purposes. There are picket fences, back yard fences, construction site fences, park fences and electric fences, just to name five. In the once prosperous state of California, however, the two most notorious types of fences are those erected to keep people out of the country and to keep people in prison.
Because of California’s draconian sentencing laws, those who are sent to prison and those who cross our borders illegally end up having one thing in common: they get to the other side of the fence for a long stay. In the case of those who are sent to prison, though, the length of their stay is often in disproportion with their offense, especially of those who are sentenced to life under the Three Strikes law.
This is my second time here at San Quentin (I was here from 1999 to 2001. then transferred out). I’ve heard of the impact of the Three Strikes sentencing law, but this time around I’m seeing it and feeling it, as I’ve run into so many convicts who have been struck out (some of them I’ve seen go home a few times from here and from other prisons). And although I know these men are not angels – neither am I – I believe it’s unfair for anyone to spend the rest of his life in prison for an offense for which he otherwise would have been sentenced to a couple of years.
So where is the problem, and what’s the solution? I think that if we change and have better control of our behavior, especially when we get out of prison, legislators will have less reason to get carried away and enact exaggerated sentencing laws that, as we’ve seen, don’t pay off. I’m no scholar but, as I see it, the roots of the problem and the roots of its solution are on both sides of the fence.