Legislatures and law enforcement agencies are always looking for ways to reduce the number of individuals who commit crimes. Because of this goal, a chief objective of many of the punishments for crimes is deterrence. One way in which agencies and state and the federal legislatures have attempted to decrease the number of crimes being committed is by implementing "three strikes" laws. Just like in baseball, three strikes and you're out.

The basic premise behind the three strikes laws in existence now is that recidivism should be punished. A person should be punished more severely for subsequent crimes since he or she clearly didn't learn not to commit crimes the first time. This principle can be seen in various drunk driving conviction rules as well as in the three strikes laws. Here, a person is given two convictions with "ordinary" terms of incarceration and then, with the third crime, a person is sent away for life. Fortunately, not just any crime warrants application to the three strikes law. Generally only serious criminal offenses, like felonies, are considered eligible.
 
This type of law initially became popular during the early 1990s when California became the first state to enact a provision like this. Since 1994, 23 other states have followed California's trend and enacted their own similar statutes. The statutes enacted by roughly half of the states in the country require a state court to hand down a mandatory and extended period of incarceration (like life in prison) for those who have been convicted of serious criminal offenses on three or more separate occasions. 
 
While the states have enacted these bits of legislation with the best intentions, they have been met with some hostility from other states saying that the statutes don't work. Some argue that there is virtually no difference between the crime rates of states with statutes and those without. This is untrue, at least for the example below.  
 
In 1993, the year before it enacted its statute, California recorded 336,381 separate incidents of violent crimes. In 2000, the number of violent crimes had dropped to 210,531 separate incidents for a 37% or so reduction in the number reported. Minnesota, a state without a three strikes statute in place as of 2000, had 183,347 violent crimes reported in 1993. In 2000, Minnesota reported 157,798 violent crimes which results in a reduction in crime of 13%. Obviously, California's reduction was greater than Minnesota's by twenty four percentage points.