California's widely touted three-strikes-you're-out law is credited with having put more habitual offenders behind bars and scared others away from violence. But according to one ex-convict with seven felonies on his record, the law has done little to deter professional criminals from their paths. It has merely driven them deeper underground and prompted some to resort to greater violence. PNS commentator Dannie Martin is a San Francisco-based author whose latest book is "The Dish Washer" (W.W. Norton). This is the first of an occasional series looking at the impact of three strikes from the vantage point of second-strikers.

SACRAMENTO -- A year after the three strikes you're out law took effect in California, a lot of experts claim such measures are making streets safer by locking up more of the career criminals and scaring others away from violence. They point to the two-year drop in homicide rates in major American cities as evidence.

However, for most thieves, outlaws, rapists, gangbangers, and whoever else society defines as criminal, life after 'three strikes' is pretty much as usual. Unless we see a clear way out of the underground culture, we keep on doing what we're doing -- only we tend to do it alone. We're cagier. And we know things are tougher and meaner on the streets than they've ever been.

My own terror reflects the vulnerability of someone who's almost made it out -- I'm a former thief who was fortunate enough to become a novelist. But with seven felony convictions on my record, I sometimes wonder what would happen if a good law-abiding citizen after a bad day were to assault me physically. With some luck, I manage to overcome him just as the police arrive. He charges me with assault. His testimony would play much better than mine in a court. End of story and end of me as well.

Recently I visited an older thief with a few strikes on his record to see whether he felt this occasional terror. His phone was turned off and it took me a few days to find him. But he looked prosperous and I asked about the phone.

"I had it turned off on purpose," he told me. "I'm afraid someone will call and ask me for a lawnmower part and a narcotics detective will get on the stand and say that 'lawnmower' part was really cocaine or heroin and I'm gone."

I had figured that, like me, he had quit stealing. That wasn't so.

"I'm still in the hunt but things have changed. I work alone now," he explained, "because of all the informants and the consequences. But hell, I've got to make a living."

Two or three other thieves I know told me almost the same thing.

What these habitual criminals fear isn't just getting caught; it's other criminals. Three strikes has created a nothing-left-to-lose mentality that has upped the use of violence in the underworld.

Last month, one of the best friends I ever had was found in a burning pick-up truck on Twitchell Island near Sacramento. The fire department at first thought it was a fisherman's body but when they discovered multiple gunshot wounds, they realized they had a homicide.

Blair Guthrie was his name. The San Francisco Chronicle once called him "the Julia Child of methamphetamine cooks." When I last saw him, he put a ball of sparkling meth on the table that looked like a golf ball. Snorted it all in two nostrils.

Blair's death sent shock waves throughout the underworld. In the past, he had been shot five times, and lived. "I've been shot by everything now except a rifle," he said to me after a hole got put in his chest with a nine millimeter.

Blair's death signifies to everyone in the outlaw culture that it's a whole new ballgame out there. "If we rob you, we will kill you and will set you on fire." That's the message we got. If the robber has two priors, a murder and an arson is no different to him than a robbery.

Another friend of mine named William Crouch was killed during a particularly brutal crime in Santa Rosa last spring. For years I'd known him as Wiley Coyote -- a perennial convict who had always shied away from violence. But now at age 64, he walked up to an armored car guard, shot him in the head, and was, in turn, killed by another guard. With two felonies on your record, he must have figured, why not use the gun? There's no difference in the time you'll serve.

A man called me from prison the other day. I said to him: "They are getting serious and mean out here."

"It was always serious, homeboy," he replied. He's been in prison fourteen years on a crank (methamphetamine) conspiracy.

"Well, I don't know," I said. "I was always a clown myself."

"There's no clowns in our circus," he answered. "Never have been. It's always been serious."

"Well, I was one," I insisted.

"When you robbed that bank vault you had a .357 magnum with hollow point shells," he said. "Did you ever see a clown with one of those?" He was right.

I'm watching my P's and Q's a bit more now. The clowns are sad and serious. It's still business as usual but it's not service-oriented or user-friendly anymore.