As noted, more plausible and actionable causes can be found in the rela tionship between crowding, pretrial release, and plea bargaining. Note that the 1976 study by Nagel and Neef dealt with prison crowding before the advent of new mandatory sentencing statutes. Thus, an additional cause of prison crowding is the effect of anti drug statutes on plea bargaining. If this diminishes plea bargaining and pretrial release, the courts would be even more clogged, leading to an increase in jail overcrowding. Three-strike legislation has resulted in more jury trials in efforts by defendants to avoid prison. While only 3% of the 26,237 Los Angeles Superior Court cases in 1996 were three-strike cases, they accounted for 24% of the jury trials. The three-strike law will require an extra 17,000 jury trials at an expense of S27 million per year (The Economist1997&).