Californians can no longer afford their emotional overreaction to the high crime rates of the 1990s. It's past time to revise the state's 17-year-old Three Strikes Law and take a more nuanced approach to dealing with repeat felons.

Stanford University's Three Strikes Project, led by law professor Michael Romano, is drafting an initiative and hopes to collect the 500,000 signatures needed to place it on the November 2012 ballot. We'll have to see the final details, but the project's aim to apply the law to only serious or violent third offenders is on target. This would not only save money now wasted on incarcerating aging criminals but also would steer the law closer to what we believe voters intended back in 1994.

Romano calls California's law the harshest sentencing tool in the United States. Passed in the wake of Richard Allen Davis' brutal kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, it was sold as the way to permanently lock up violent, repeat offenders and make our communities safe. Unfortunately, it has been used by some district attorneys to give life sentences to about 4,000 inmates who committed nonviolent crimes. Nearly 9,000 prisoners in California have life sentences under the Three Strikes Law.

The cost to taxpayers has been staggering. A 2010 state report put the total cost of applying the Three Strikes Law at nearly $20 billion, or roughly $35,000 a year per inmate. Those costs will only increase as the prison population ages and skyrocketing health care costs add to the total.

Californians didn't bother planning for enough prison beds when they passed the Three Strikes Law, so when the state began locking people up at record rates, the population grew to about 150,000 -- more than double the system's capacity. The California Supreme Court ruled in May that this overcrowding constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It has ordered California to release up to 33,000 prisoners.

The state shouldn't even think about freeing violent offenders. It should focus on inmates convicted of drug offenses and lesser crimes. But under the current law, it's not possible to release any of the nonviolent Three Strikes inmates sentenced to life.

Californians had their chance to fix the Three Strikes Law in 2004, but scare tactics by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and some hard-core prosecutors caused voters to reject a reform proposition by a small margin.

Some sensible prosecutors decided years ago that they would only apply Three Strikes to violent offenders. But others, especially in conservative, rural counties, still relish applying the law whenever possible. A third strike could be a drug abuse violation at age 50, when violent tendencies are long past and massive health care costs loom.

Other states -- including New York -- have lowered their crime rates without draconian sentencing laws. California can, too, and must: As the state faces a $13 billion budget shortfall that could devastate education and health and human service programs, unnecessary spending on incarceration is nothing less than fiscal mismanagement. We hope the Three Strikes Project's initiative can move us back toward sanity.