Three Strikes Law In Matt Taibbi's The Rolling Stone

Over 2.7 million children in the U.S. have parents currently locked up behind prison bars. The U.S. also has the highest prison population in the entire world. Hearing and reading all this information about prisons has me thinking about the United States strict laws and punishments. I read an article from “The Rolling Stone” by Matt Taibbi, that talked about the injustice that a lot of people in prison are currently facing from a harsh rule called the three strikes law. Overall I think the article got its point across to the audience but I think it was too much, it made me start to lose interest. The article shows many examples of criminals that got sentenced for life when committing their third crime, even if they were very small, petty …show more content…
Matt begins to tell the story of a criminal, “A violent felon named Richard Allen Davis kidnapped and murdered an adolescent girl named Polly Klaas.” After this incident the author begins to tell you how the three strikes law came to be. People didn’t want repeat offenders out there where they could easily harm more people, like in the case above. Telling this sad story of a little girl is how the writer appeals to the audience’s emotional side. Creating an emotional link with the audience will help get the point of the article across stronger. After telling you this story the author tells you the statistics about what the three strike rule is, “anyone who had committed two serious felonies would effectively be sentenced to jail for life upon being convicted of a third crime.” This quote shows the reader his credibility in writing this article, that his facts can be backed up and …show more content…
He uses credibility so that you can believe the information being said in this article and you don’t have to go searching for another article to back up his facts. Describing many third strike incidents and showing how small crimes turn into huge punishments, is a way that the author shows his credibility. But when he does this he also must use lots of different names, and dates that start to make it a little too confusing at times. There’s one point where Matt talks about different lawyers, “Romano eventually left his clerking job and returned to Stanford Law, with the idea of doing something about the Three Strikes. There, he met up with Professor David Mills, Senior lecturer at the school.” Here the author is describing lawyers trying to amend the Three Strikes law. To me, he throws out these names without context and just repeats them, making it confusing. I started to lose interest in the topic that he’s talking about in the article. During the rest of the article he continues to talk about new lawyers, and firms to make it even crazier to keep track. At one point I didn’t know if the people being talked about were already introduced, or if I was just supposed to assume I knew who they were, and how they fit into the

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Three Strikes Law In Matt Taibbi's The Rolling Stone

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