A year ago California voters passed Proposition 184 mandating 25 years to life for three time felony offenders. Young African American males see themselves as the key target and statistics bear out their fears: in Los Angeles, where blacks make up fewer than one out of ten residents, the ratio of black to non-black sentenced under three strikes is 17-to-one. In San Francisco, blacks also make up the majority of three-strikers. PNS's network of youth reporters wrote personal essays and interviewed several dozen inner-city residents about how the three strikes law has changed their lives. Some credit the law with giving them a new sense of purpose. Some blame it for forcing them underground just at the point when they had begun to turn their lives around. Most say they are more scared, suspicious, or angry -- and isolated -- than they were a year ago. Joseph Thomas, Ladie Terry and Charles Jones are reporters for YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about young people published by Pacific News Service. Two other essays are by YO! writers who asked to remain anonymous.

These essays were printed in the November/December edition of YO! magazine, published by Pacific News Service.

Q. I understand you just got out of the penitentiary?

A. Yeah, two months ago.

Q. What were you in for?

A. Manslaughter. That was my second time. The first time was for armed robbery.

Q. So you have two strikes -- how do you feel about that?

A. With the three strikes law it's very scary because I'm a 22-year-old black man and I'm its target. If I walk out here on these streets and just bend the wrong corner and touch somebody wrong or say somethin' wrong, you know I end up doin' the rest of my life behind prison walls.

Q. What have you been doing since you got out?

A. I try to keep myself at a steady pace. I try hittin' studios so I can lay down these raps that I had in my mind in the penitentiary, plus at the same time I gotta take care of myself and my kids.

Q. What kind of example are you setting for them?

A. I gotta set the kind of example my father didn't set for me. Due to the fact that I never had a father, it's gonna be hard. But hopefully, I'm gonna teach them to grow up to be somethin' that I wasn't, which they will be.

Q. What is your plan?

A. The first day I got out I seen Jack Jacqua of Omega Boys Club. He told me, if I do it this way, I won't have to see them three strikes. He talk about being a square. And if being a square is gonna keep me out here on these streets, I'm gonna be the squarest brother you know.

Q. So how has the three strikes law affected your life?

A. To tell you the truth, these people that started this law done a lot for me because they made me stronger ... Got me mad enough to go ahead and get my life together, lay down tracks in these studios, go out there and get a job, go out there and speak to these young blacks that's gonna need it, the kids that's gonna be there when I'm gone.

Q. What do you tell the younger brothers?

A. I'll tell them you hoppin' on a freeway to where it's gonna end up into a gang. That gang's gonna end up to either you gonna get killed or you gonna be in jail. Once you get up in jail then it's over, cause then you're gonna hit the penitentiary. And once you hit the penitentiary your whole life is gone. I went to jail for killing somebody. That ain't nothing nice, that ain't nothing to be proud about. I took somebody else's son off this earth. I think about that every night.

Q. How did you feel at the time about taking another man's life?

A. When it was goin' on it was just another part of life. To shoot somebody and kill somebody was just, you know, to be in a gang, to be down for your set, to be real with your homeys. So I really didn't have no feelin' towards popping nobody, letting somebody have it. It was just like, let's go play football, let's go shoot this m..f...er over here on these streets.

Q. What made you change?

A. I used to go to funerals three or four times a month. If I wasn't in jail, I was at a funeral. Then my mom passed away while I was in the pen. I couldn't go to her funeral. She died in a penitentiary herself, 'cause she was up in the same gang. Her whole family was up in the same gang. It just goes around and around.

Q. Have you been to her grave?

A. When I got out I went to visit her grave. I spent like an hour and a half walking around the whole cemetery lookin' for my mama. It's like what I been going through all my life, looking for a mama and can't find her, and now when I do find her, she under ground. That's just what kinda did me, but it made me stronger, because my mama wanted me to do good.

Q. What kind of trap did you fall back into before that you're going to try to avoid this time?

A. I didn't take nothing serious until these people told me I had two strikes. Now I've got five kids and two other females pregnant, which means that I have seven kids by six different women ... Anybody that has seven kids is a person that can't really control his sexual drive. But I did it and now I gotta handle the responsibility.

Q. How are you handling it?

A. I'm going to community college, taking four classes, to get my high school diploma. Then I'm gonna go to college ... so I can get some kind of degree. It's gonna be hard tryin' to go to college and takin' care of all them kids ... but I think I can manage it. I believe in God.

Q. Has God been strong in your life?

A. Yes, that's all I really got ... It feels good to just be able to walk down the street and pray, knowing that somebody always got your back. I know that He always got my back.

When the "Three Strikes You're Out" law was passed I didn't really give it any DEEP thought. My thinking was, "If you're going to do something wrong, then do it the right way and that three strike madness won't fade you."

But now three strikes has put me in a Catch 22 where the only way out is to go deeper underground. Just when I had started my journey to the heights I've got to go back down to the bottom where I began.

At the age of nine, I was put into juvenile hall for breaking the law. Before I turned sixteen, I'd been in and out of juvenile about seventeen times. It wasn't because of my mom and dad, nor because of my immediate family, period.

I chose to run with the guys my mom always told me to stay away from. They taught me to do things my parents didn't think I should know at that point in my life. Like: sex, alcohol, weed, drug dealing, playing with guns, constantly fighting to uphold the hood, etc. I was the equivalent of a Baby Gangsta: Another "Nigger for Profit" in the eyes of Americans in high places.

By the time I was sixteen I was facing at least eleven felonies in one swoop plus being tried as an adult for being a "sophisticated criminal," as they put it in court. Fortunately, I got off the hook with one felony which can also be looked upon as one strike.

After serving time, I was released from prison on parole and finished that with no problem. But a year and a half later, I came face to face with another situation -- a confrontation which involved the threat of physical combat -- and I landed another felony right at home plate: strike two.

After that happened I said, "To hell with submitting myself to the jail system" and started working on going to college. I was successful in my rebellion but only in part. I was accepted by the college I applied to with philosophy as my major. But lo and behold, here comes the past sneaking up on me. I learn from my lawyer I have a warrant for a new assault charge -- one I know nothing about -- and he's telling me to turn myself in.

The way I see it, the people I'd had the confrontation with weren't satisfied with the time I served. They had their lawyer send the district attorney a statement saying I assaulted one of them. Now if I turn myself in there won't be any trial. I would be considered a parole violator just for the simple fact that they'd made a complaint against me. It would be their word against my dragon tail criminal record.

Here's the trap: I can't go to college because there's a warrant out for me that could land me a third strike. So I have to find a job to support myself, but I can't get a job because I have a warrant. So I have to go underground just to meet the basic necessities of life: food, shelter and clothing. The only alternative is to simply put my head inside the system's cannon and let them blow it off by turning myself in.

What in hell do I look like running away from the plantation and then turning around and coming back? What's the three strikes madness in a nutshell? Legal assassination.

Despite two felony convictions -- one for selling herb to an undercover officer, the other for a theft related crime -- the Three Strikes You're Out law didn't stop me from dealing. I was without a home, and providing "$20 bags" of herb was my only source of income. One bag a day earned the $5 I needed for brunch, $5 for cigarettes and coffee, and $5 for dinner, with some left over. But I did relocate, became more cautious, and only did business with friends and acquaintances. The fact is, if someone wants to sell, they're gonna sell. If they wanna buy, they're gonna buy.

Three strikes also made me more paranoid and skeptical of people in power. Increasingly, I feel I have to be extra careful for fear of being harassed by the police. I don't carry my I.D. so they can find out whom I am. I go out dancing less, because you usually need an I.D. to be on the street at night. If I go to an all-night rave, I'll stay through the whole thing until it ends around 4 or 5 am.

I'm also careful of what I say on the phone. Like, if I'm doing business, I'll use code words. My girlfriend couldn't understand my fear. One day she paged me and I called her back from a pay-phone. She got mad when I wouldn't tell her the name of the person's house where I was going over the phone.

I realize now that my troubles with the law were a bigger part of what made my girlfriend break up with me than she wanted me to believe. Three strikes has changed my life more than I first thought.

When I first heard about the new Three Strikes You're Out law, my boyfriend was incarcerated. I knew he couldn't have a radio, so I kept him informed. I told him that if he was in possession of crack for the third time, he could go to jail for 25 years.

At first I was calm, but then I started to cry. He had left me twice for jail already -- the first time for two years and the second for five months. I told him I couldn't handle his leaving me for 25 years. I'm scared to be in love with him now.

When my boyfriend got a job as a security officer, I congratulated him. He held that job for a year. Then they found out he'd served time in jail, and they fired him, even though he was a good worker. He'd sold crack to put food on the table and clothes on his back, but they made him out to be the bad guy for trying to survive.

Because it's hard for a black man in America -- especially one with a record -- to get a job, I have a feeling my boyfriend will start selling drugs again. I constantly remind him of the consequences if I catch him dealing or cutting crack. Once I see him taking the easy way out, the relationship is over!

America sickens me by targeting the poor and unfortunate. They tell you they don't want to send you to jail, but no one gives you a chance to work. It's like they blocked all four of the corners without leaving you a way out.

My boyfriend is 24 years old with no job, living with his mother. America, do you really want this man to make it? Or do you want to throw stones at him despite your own mistakes?

"Strike one!" yells the umpire at the bottom of the 9th, with two out. "Strike two!" he repeats, as the batter curses with all the cool of a lava pit. "Strike three!" The batter leaves the field defeated, embarrassed, booed, while teammates smile empty smiles and extend lifeless handshakes.

Outside the stadium, three strikes means more than the loss of victory. Thanks to the three strikes law, judges now can determine human life with the same rules as a baseball umpire. A third strike means the end of freedom and the beginning of death.

As an 18-year-old with a track record of felonies, I feel as if my options have run out. My biggest fear is not that I'll stray across some invisible line but that I'll be pulled over the line. Senseless arrests and undeserved jail time have kept my hands dirty. Many a night I have run from the police for fear of getting a strike.

While in jail, I've observed that the majority of inmates down on strikes are black (about 50 percent), Latino (30 percent), Asian (10 percent) and white (10 percent). I know brothers now who no longer fear the law and have adapted a "F... it. If you want me, come get me!" attitude. Three strikes is a cheap, sadistic scare tactic and for those who don't fear it there are brutal officers and crooked judges with the common goal of eradicating the colored man.

But the plan may backfire. Three strikes has driven some to the point of saying -- and meaning -- "If a cop tries to arrest me and I have two strikes, the cop's dead!"