This November an amended three strikes initiative will be placed on the ballot. Unfortunately, over the last decade, holding a statewide office in California required a pledge of allegiance to the state's grotesque Three-Strikes law. With a couch potato population afraid to walk outside their gated communities, "tough on crime" politicians flourished, taking victim's rights to extremes. Other state's have Three-Strikes laws, but California's is the just plain ugly. It is the only one in …showed first 75 words of 691 total…

…showed last 75 words of 691 total…over Polly's death," Klaas says. "My family is deeply disappointed by the law that passed in her name because of its failure to focus on hard-core criminals by diverting critical resources to the prosecution of non-violent offenses." According to Klaas, the new law "will resolve this terrible miscarriage of justice and restore a sense of purpose to my granddaughter's death. "Locking up shoplifters for 25 years" Klaas says, "is not equivalent to being tough on crime."