The public's perception and ascribed beliefs regarding California's Three-Strikes law: The long term implications.

摘要

Prison populations within California have grown tremendously over the last 10 years, and as a result, many facilities are overcrowded. Mandatory sentence laws, such as the Three-Strikes law have contributed to the growing prison populations. The publics' beliefs regarding this topic is valuable, especially when examining individuals' level of education and overall knowledge; therefore, this study hypothesized that the undergraduate students held the most negative beliefs regarding the Three-Strikes law, whereas the doctoral interns held the most positive beliefs, and the graduate students held more neutral beliefs of the California's Three-Strikes law.;A survey was distributed in person to students which included questions pertaining to beliefs of California's Three-Strikes law. One hundred and ninety individuals participated in the survey; mostly Caucasian and female. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run to see if there was any statistical significance of the effects of level of education (IV) on the beliefs (DV) using a statistic program called SPSS. There was a significant effect of the level of education on the beliefs. A post hoc comparison indicated that the mean score for the undergraduate condition was significantly different than the graduate student condition; however, the intern condition did not significantly differ from the graduate student condition.