There's a subtler point: even if they are criminals, it's still valid to represent criminals to make sure that justice is served. You want criminals punished for the crimes they did commit, not the ones they didn't. You want sentencing to be fair, not vindictive. You want conspirators and other partners to be identified and to be punished too; you don't want the one unrepresented person to be coerced by everyone else's lawyers into taking all the blame. You want loopholes, as long as they exist, to be as available to the poor as to the rich.
I think I'm actually more worried about the loss of this than the loss of innocence-until-proven-guilty. That's the sort of stuff that gets people thinking, if you don't want to be extrajudicially killed on the streets, don't sell untaxed goods if you have asthma.
There's also a not-quite-subtler point: many of the "crimes" in question are nonviolent and do no harm to anyone other than the supposed "criminal". The article specifically mentions "possession of a single joint" as something that can lead to life imprisonment if you do it three times. What kind of sense does that make?
The OP's characterization of it is wrong--three non-violent felonies couldn't trigger three-strikes' even before California's recent reform (you had two have two violent felonies first).
Moreover, for-profit prisons barely existed in the early 1990's when states like California and Washington started passing three strikes laws. Law enforcement, prison unions, private prisons, etc, have definitely benefited from these things, but the actual policies arose from public outrage in the 1980's and 1990's about the government being "soft on crime." For example, either California's law was passed on the back of public outrage at the murder of Polly Klass.
One bit of context that's lost in current discussions is how much consternation existed in the 1980's and 1990's about crime. If you look at the media from the time, there is a ton of hand-wringing about criminals being let out early on parole or clearly guilty people getting acquitted "on a technicality" (usually a 4th amendment violation).
A movie that captures the zeitgeist of the time is the 1983 movie Star Chamber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber: "Judge Steven Hardin (Michael Douglas) is an idealistic Los Angeles jurist who gets frustrated when the technicalities of the law prevent the prosecution of two men who are accused of raping and killing a 10-year-old boy. They were driving slowly late at night and attracted the suspicion of two police officers, who wondered if the van's occupants might be burglars. After checking the license plate for violations, the policemen pulled them over for expired paperwork, claimed to have smelled marijuana, then saw a bloody shoe inside the van. However, the paperwork was actually submitted on time (it was merely processed late), meaning the police had no reason to pull over the van and Hardin has no choice (see fruit of the poisonous tree) but to throw out any subsequently discovered evidence, i.e. the bloody shoe. Hardin is even more distraught when the father of the boy attempts to shoot the criminals in court but misses and shoots a cop instead. Subsequently, the father commits suicide while in jail only after he informs Hardin that another boy has been discovered raped and murdered and tells him "This one is on you, your Honor. That boy would be alive if you hadn't let those men go." After hearing all this, Judge Hardin approaches his friend, Judge Caulfield (Hal Holbrook), who tells him of a modern-day Star Chamber: a group of judges who identify criminals who fell through the judicial system's cracks and then take actions against them outside the legal structure."
You missed that she's not talking about California's The Strikes laws - she's in Louisiana.
"In Louisiana, people with as few as two prior nonviolent felony convictions can face mandatory life imprisonment on charges as minor as possession of a syringe containing heroin residue or, until recently, possession of a single joint."
I think we over-imprison people, but let's not ignore there was an actual crime wave. Between, say, 1960 until the peak in 1991, violent crimes per 100k per year went from 160 to 758 for a 470% increase, remaining over 600 through 1997. And even in 1995 nobody knew that the crime wave had peaked; it would take another 8+ years (6 years of data plus reporting lag) for people to realize that.
There's no way not to have a large reaction to such a dramatic increase.
As long as there is some kind of incentive structure built into the jobs of people involved in law enforcement (and there needs to be, if you want them to do their jobs) it will be in at least some people's interest to maximise prosecutions. It is the purpose of a well-designed system to restrict their ability to do so. We have a word for circumventing these restrictions - "corruption".
Drugs have historically been illegal because the population had a moral objection to them, not because of some shady profiteering cabal. People have been criminalizing drug use (with alcohol being the most common target) for a very long time.
Non-violent crimes have been a concept long before someone stood to make money off them. (Of course, that doesn't imply that they make sense.)
Don't think you read that right. The first two strikes have to be felonies (not just possession). She also says that the third strike "until recently" could be possession of a joint, but not anymore, apparently.
I'm going to have to ask about the downvoting here. Do people think Capone was sentenced for the same crimes he was convicted of? Do people think those sentences meet the bar of "fair, non-vindictive punishment for tax evasion"?
I have no idea why you were downvoted (and physically couldn't downvote you as a direct reply, but anyway). I think I agree that Al Capone was nominally punished for a crime that wasn't one of the crimes he really ought to be punished for (although it was in fact also a crime). But on the other hand, I'm not sure that I think a seven-year sentence would have really been sufficient for the fullness of his crimes.
Perhaps more importantly, if Wikipedia's account is to be believed, he lost the tax evasion case because he had bad lawyers: first, one who admitted to the facts of the crime, and second, an initial defense team who didn't raise objections they could have raised. So I don't think the Capone example contradicts my claims in the end. We need defense lawyers for actual, unquestionable criminals because they have the singular goal of making sure people aren't unfairly or vindictively prosecuted. We understand that having just a prosecutor and a judge risks unjust outcomes. So it's unsurprising that wasn't the passive-voice "approach taken" with him: a trial without good defense is expected not to lead to a just approach, just as much as a trial without good prosecution or a good judge.
At best it's not clear what your point is or what position you're espousing, which I think is a mostly valid reason for downvote-and-move-on. For instance, it's not clear whether you think the prosecution of Capone was just or unjust.
> which I think is a mostly valid reason for downvote-and-move-on. For instance, it's not clear whether you think the prosecution of Capone was just or unjust
I don't see why this makes the comment less worthwhile. I think going for Al Capone that way was a terrible idea, but you seem to have changed your own mind in the other direction based on my viewpoint-free comment. (At least, that's what I get from "I'm not sure that I think a seven-year sentence would have really been sufficient for the fullness of his crimes".) I highlighted a point from your comment and pointed out that a lot of people don't share that value at all; I think that's worth noting regardless of whether your ultimate conclusion is "hmm, Al Capone illustrates that only punishing people for the crimes they committed is a bad idea" or "the US justice system has been going downhill since the early 20th century, but I wish people would come to their senses".
You also want the state to have the burden of proving guilt. Without an advocate for the defendant, it's very easy to go to jail without proof. Even if you did it, the state should still have to prove beyond reasonable doubt; the defense lawyer provides that reasonable doubt.
Exactly, everybody deserves a fair trial. A defending lawyer is a very important part of it. Normal people just don't know how court works, and have no chance whatsoever - even if not guilty.
I think I'm actually more worried about the loss of this than the loss of innocence-until-proven-guilty. That's the sort of stuff that gets people thinking, if you don't want to be extrajudicially killed on the streets, don't sell untaxed goods if you have asthma.