States are less likely to reform “three strikes” laws if they use them regularly and have higher levels of prison privatization

In the mid-1990s nearly half of U.S. states adopted “three strikes” laws, which impose lengthy sentences after a third serious conviction, as part of a “tough on crime” policy approach. Many states, however, began to reform or modify these laws in the 2000s. In new research, Matthew Cravens and Andrew Karch find that states that use their three strikes laws regularly were less likely to reform them if they had more extensive prison privatization and organized prison officer unions. In addition, those states with a higher proportion of African-American residents were also less likely to modify their laws. While fiscal pressures and political ideology also influenced reform, the results suggest that stakeholders seeking to maintain an incarceration-heavy status quo had an outsized influence.