NYT had an article the other day that looked at the controversy surrounding the asymmetric sentences passed out in the 80s and 90s between crack and cocaine. At that time, crack was considered 100x worse than coke for sentencing purposes. Now it's only 8x or something equally arbitrary. Anyway, there are a lot of people who were given life sentences for something that would only get them a few years now. Unfortunately, it seems like the attitude of the courts amounts to "tough luck--that was the law at the time, so you're fucked, buddy". It's pretty sad that something that is deemed unconstitutional now is still considered retroactively constitutional. Doesn't really make any kind of rational sense.
I don't know Austria is proposition central in Europe and is one of the most conservative countries. in California 3 strikes and prop 8 (obviously) passed as proposition