The Press has written an excellent, must-read editorial on three strikes today.  Further to my previous post on California, The Press had this to say:

But, more importantly, evidence from other jurisdictions clearly shows that similar laws elsewhere have deterred serious crime. The most commonly cited example is the three-strikes law in California. The California law was not well constructed and has flaws that the bill proposed here has eliminated. But, for all those flaws, academic studies have shown that the law, which has been in effect for more than a decade, has measurably deterred the crimes it covers, despite a rise in other offending.

The anti-deterrence lobby’s argument grows weaker by the day.