Two of the men wanted for questioning about the Monday morning shooting of a pair of police officers had each committed violent sexual assaults before their 18th birthdays. A third suspect, whom police have already arrested and charged with attempted murder, had shot a person as a teenager.

Their criminal histories, compiled over two decades through half a dozen separate acts of violence between them, are already sparking debate over whether the current sentencing laws bring sufficient prison time for violent offenders.

“In this case, we once again see the tragic results of a court system which did not punish thugs as they should have been punished,” a City Council member who is a former Manhattan prosecutor, Peter Vallone Jr., said.

Others, noting that the court system continued to supervise two of the men through recent weeks, said the criminal justice system appeared to be doing its job.

Referring to the court monitoring, a former deputy director of criminal justice under Governor Pataki, Greg Camp, said: “Obviously the system was working in the cases of at least two of the defendants.” But he added that “there is no question that the facts laid out would support a higher sentence” for several of the crimes the suspects previously committed.

The suspects, Dexter Bostic, Robert Ellis, and Lee Woods, all served time for their crimes, doing prison stints of at least seven years. Two remain under court monitoring programs, due to post-supervised release in Bostic’s case and sex offender status for Ellis.

As recently as last Thursday, a parole officer checked up on Bostic at his Queens home to see that the felon was home by his curfew. He was.

“Parole officers did their job,” a spokeswoman for the state division of parole, Carole Weaver, said of Bostic, the only one still monitored by the parole division. “This case was covered.”

Ellis had been in a Queens courtroom three times this spring to face questions about why he, as a sex offender, had failed to inform authorities about an address change. Two weeks ago he didn’t show up for a court date on the same issue, and a judge put out a warrant in his name.

Woods was arrested yesterday. Police charged him with attempted murder and aggravated assault of an officer in connection to the shootings of police officers Herman Yan and Russell Timoshenko. The gunfire came from a stolen BMW, inside of which police sources place the three men.

The shooting could spark calls to revive the death penalty, which the state’s top court struck down in 2004. Since then, there has been little movement on reinstating capital punishment in Albany, although Governor Spitzer has said he favors it for the murderers of police officers. Earlier this year, he appointed a commission on sentencing reform. Sources close to the commission say it’s too early to know whether it will recommend stricter or more lenient changes to the current sentencing laws.

There is no direct overlap in the criminal histories of the three suspects; but those histories are similar for their early violence.

The eldest, Dexter Bostic, 35, first did hard time starting in 1990. Two separate crimes, which he committed in Queens at 16, put him in prison: he and an accomplice kidnapped and sexually assaulted a woman in October 1988; the following month he committed a robbery and assault, a spokeswoman for the state correctional department, Linda Foglia, said.

Bostic served nine years, nearly the-then standard two-thirds of the maximum of his five- to 15-year sentence. Paroled in 1999, he soon thereafter committed another crime. With an accomplice, he robbed a couple in East New York, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said. A shot was fired, but no one was hit. Bostic pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon and was sentenced to three years in prison and five of post-supervised release. Since his 2004 release, Bostic has undergone sex offender counseling and been subject to curfews. He was also required to seek or maintain employment, a condition he appears to have fulfilled. Police sources say he worked at the Inwoods, Long Island, car dealership from which the BMW used in the shooting was stolen.

Ellis, 34, was a month short of his 18th birthday when he committed rape in Queens. He and an accomplice forced themselves into the victim’s home, slashing and raping her at gunpoint, Ms. Foglia said. He received a sentence of three and a half to 10 years. Like Bostic, he served the presumptive two thirds: It worked out to seven years.

The youngest of the suspects, Woods, 29, in 1993 was sentenced as a juvenile for a shooting, Ms. Foglia said. She was unable to provide more details. He was sentenced to 16 months to four years. He served about a year. His criminal history since then is dense. He was arrested for possessing a loaded weapon in 1997 and served a seven-year sentence. He racked up 25 disciplinary infractions including assaulting a staff member, Ms. Foglia said. He was last arrested this April and spent a night in Rikers, a city correctional spokesman, Steve Morello, said.