David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

behind bars in California’s prisons in 1989. Within ten years, that number would double—and along the way, the crime rate in California came tumbling down. Between 1994 and 1998, the homicide rate in California dropped 41.4 percent, rape dropped 10.9 percent, robbery dropped by 38.7 percent, assault dropped by 22.1 percent, burglary dropped by 29.9 percent, and auto theft dropped by 36.6 percent. Mike Reynolds pledged, on his daughter’s deathbed, to ensure that what happened to Kimber would never happen to anyone else—and out of his grief came a revolution.
    “Back then, we were seeing twelve murders a day in the state of California. Today it’s about six,” Reynolds said. “So every day that goes by, I like to think that there’s six people alive that wouldn’t have been prior to this.” He was sitting in the office of his house in Fresno, surrounded by pictures of himself with dignitaries of one sort or another and plaques and signed certificates and framed letters—all testifying to the extraordinary role he has played in the politics of America’s largest state. “Every once in a while during the course of your life, you might have an opportunity to save somebody else’s life,” he went on. “You know, pull ’em out of a burning building, rescue ’em from drowning or some other crazy thing. But how many people get a chance to save six people’s lives each and every day? I mean, I think, I’m so lucky.”
    He paused, as if he were going back over all that had happened in the nearly twenty years since he made that promise to Kimber. He was remarkably articulate and persuasive. It was obvious how, even in the midst of overwhelming grief, he would have been so compelling all those years ago on the Ray Appleton show. He started up again: “Think about the guy that invented safety belts. Do you know his name? I don’t. I’ve got no clue. But think about how many guys that are safe, or people that are safe, as a result of safety belts or air bags or tamper-proof medicine containers. I could sit here and go right through it. Simple devices that are made by Joe Average, just like me, that have gone on to save numerous lives. Yet we’re not looking for any kudos, we’re not looking for any pats on the back. All we’re looking for is results, and the results are my greatest reward.”
    The British came to Northern Ireland with the best of intentions and ended up in the middle of thirty years of bloodshed and mayhem. They did not get what they wanted, because they did not understand that power has an important limitation. It has to be seen as legitimate, or else its use has the opposite of its intended effect. Mike Reynolds came to wield extraordinary influence in his home state. There are few other Californians of his generation whose actions and ideas have touched as many people as his have. But in his case, power seemed to have achieved its purpose. Just look at the California crime statistics. He got what he wanted, didn’t he?
    Nothing could be further from the truth.

3.
    Let us go back to the theory of the inverted-U curve that we discussed in the chapter on class size. Inverted-U curves are all about limits. They illustrate the fact that “more” is not always better; there comes a point, in fact, when the extra resources that the powerful think of as their greatest advantage only serve to make things worse. The inverted-U shape clearly describes the effects of class size, and it clearly applies as well to the connection between parenting and wealth. But a few years ago, a number of scholars began to make a more ambitious argument, an argument that would end up pulling Mike Reynolds and his claims for Three Strikes into the center of two decades of controversy. What if the relationship between punishment and crime was also an inverted U? In other words, what if—past a certain point—cracking down on crime stopped having any effect on criminals and maybe even started to make crime worse?
    At the time Three Strikes was passed, no one considered this possibility. Mike Reynolds and his supporters assumed that every extra criminal they locked up, and every extra year they added to the average sentence, would bring about a corresponding decrease in crime.
    “Back then, even first-degree murder was just sixteen years, and you’d do eight,” Mike Reynolds explained. He was describing California before his Three Strikes revolution. “It became a very viable option to go into the crime