Several good books dealing with the American penal system and its effects on other aspects of American society are slated to appear this year. The first of them has just been published. Locked Out, by “Jeff Manza”:http://www.cas.northwestern.edu/sociology/faculty/manza/home.html and “Chris Uggen”:http://www.soc.umn.edu/~uggen/ examines the consequences of felon disenfranchisement laws for political participation and electoral outcomes. As might be expected, the United States puts much stronger restrictions than most Western countries on the voting rights of those currently imprisoned, on parole or probation, as well as on those who have served their sentences. When coupled with the fact that the U.S. has a relatively enormous segment of its population in prison, such laws may have political effects in themselves, as well as reflecting some of the deep effects of mass incarceration in modern American society. Here’s a map (from “Chris’s website”:http://www.soc.umn.edu/%7Euggen/felon_disenfranchisement.htm) showing felon disenfranchisement laws by state (for 2004). (Click the map for a larger, more readable version.)
In the book, Manza and Uggen find that about 5.3 million people were affected by these laws as of the November 2004 election. Of these, two million were African-American. In several states, as many as one in four black men is ineligible to vote. An “earlier article”:http://www.soc.umn.edu/%7Euggen/Uggen_Manza_ASR_02.pdf by the authors estimate that felon disenfranchisement is large enough to affect national elections when they are close: felons make up about 2.5 percent of the U.S. voting-age population (a steady upward trend from just under one percent in 1976). But there’s not much political hay to be made about this — who wants to say “70 percent of felons vote Democratic”? The racial history of these laws is more important: they are largely the outcome of racial conflict during Reconstruction. Moreover, according to the authors public opinion polls suggest 80 percent of Americans are in favor of allowing convicted felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. (Only a third are in favor of allowing prisoners to vote.)
Chris Uggen also “has a good blog”:http://chrisuggen.blogspot.com/, incidentally. Today, for instance, I “learned from him”:http://chrisuggen.blogspot.com/2006/03/federal-lawsuit-over-financial-aid-for.html that students convicted of rape (for example) remain eligible for federal financial aid, but students convicted of misdemeanor drug possession are automatically ineligible. Anyway, I recommend the book.
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Maria 03.23.06 at 11:53 pm
Is there data on whether disenfranchisement laws affect inmates decisions about where to live after they complete their sentences?
Omri 03.24.06 at 1:57 am
A felon is supposed to be someone whose crime was sufficiently heinous that he has lost the community’s trust forever. What you’re pointing to is part of a larger trend – redefining felons to include people who by almost any standard have committed crimes, and have debt to pay and trust to regain, but who should be given the chance to do both.
Omri 03.24.06 at 1:58 am
Whoops… To finish the paragraph: you’re pointing to a bigger issue than just voting.
Barry 03.24.06 at 2:33 am
“…such laws may have political effects in themselves, …”
Correction – “*do* have political effects…”
Sebastian Holsclaw 03.24.06 at 3:03 am
I agree with the idea in comment #2. The problem is not that it is somehow unjust to say keep a child rapist from voting, but the fact that do the same for someone who had enough cocaine to trigger a “distribution” charge is unjust. The drug war has caused a massive perversion of the criminal system in many areas. It has led to damaging civil liberties on the front end (see Corey Maye and a huge number of drug-related search rulings) and can do so on the back end as well with inappropriate felony-voting issues.
Tim Worstall 03.24.06 at 4:55 am
Nice to see actual numbers on something I’ve suspected for years. That such felon (after completing sentences) disenfranchisement does indeed have effects on the racial composition of the electorate. Not one of the better parts of the US system.
soru 03.24.06 at 6:40 am
you’re pointing to a bigger issue than just voting..
I’m really not sure there is are many bigger issue than voting.
One small tweak to the enforcement and classification of whatever crime you commit if you refuse conscription, and you would have something like the system from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.
Make tax evasion a felony, win a vote for a tax raise, repeat until Communist.
Those are the kinds of issues that trigger civil wars.
Brett Bellmore 03.24.06 at 6:44 am
Let me jump into the pile-on. The problem isn’t felon disenfranchisement, it’s felony inflation. There are, of course, crimes of a nature that they should carry life-long disability, barring some extraordinary process. (Pardons, in other words.) The problem is that the list of felonies has been expanded to include crimes that aren’t remotely that serious, and even “crimes” that properly speaking shouldn’t be illegal.
Secondly, I’d like to remind you that the right to vote isn’t the only civil liberty convicted felons lose. There’s another remnant of Jim Crow infecting our legal system, which the left cheers, because you LIKE Jim Crow on that score: Deprivation of Second amendment rights.
If you can’t rouse yourselves to care about THAT injustice, I’m going to suspect the only reason you care about this one IS because felons tend to vote Democratic, and that you don’t actually give a damn about the rights of the people effected.
Sailorcurt 03.24.06 at 7:39 am
All of those pie in the sky suppositions about the effect of “disenfranchising” criminals assumes that they actually give enough of a crap to vote in the first place.
Sure, there are some that would exercise that right, and I have no empirical data to support my position (I’m not a researcher, just an average joe who has to work for a living) but I seriously doubt that even a majority of them would do so.
I would agree to the concept that the issue needs to be looked at. Perhaps the perpetrators of some classifications of “victimless” crimes could have their rights re-instated if they stay clean for a specified period of time. But convicted felons have demonstrated that they are incapable or unwilling to live within the guidelines set by their society, why should they be afforded the opportunity to affect the guidelines to which they have demonstrated so little regard?
The bottom line is this: I think everyone is pretty well aware of what kinds of activities can land them with a felony conviction. Don’t want to lose your voting rights? Don’t do the crimes.
One of the cool things about being a human being in a relatively free society is that we get to decide what courses of action we want to take. None of the BS “extenuating circumstances” hold water in light of the basic fact that we have free will. Criminals commit crimes because they choose to do so. Period. If something shouldn’t be a crime, then get the rest (or at least a majority of the rest) to agree with you and get the law changed.
“There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
— P.J. O’Rourke
Kieran Healy 03.24.06 at 8:14 am
The bottom line is this: I think everyone is pretty well aware of what kinds of activities can land them with a felony conviction. Don’t want to lose your voting rights? Don’t do the crimes
You are ignoring two things. The first, as others have pointed out, is felony inflation: many things — especially drug-related stuff — are now defined as felonies and treated harshly. The second is differential enforcement of/exposure to those laws. Sure, personal responsibility matters. However, if you engage in casual drug use (for example) the likelihood of you landing in jail as a result depends on much more than your moral fortitude.
eweininger 03.24.06 at 8:30 am
All of those pie in the sky suppositions about the effect of “disenfranchising†criminals assumes that they actually give enough of a crap to vote in the first place.
Whatever your views are on the normative questions raised, it’s simply not true that the argument amounts to nothing more than “pie in the sky suppositions.” The ASR article that Kieran links to in his post very carefully models the probability of voting on the basis of a standard but effective set of socio-demographic predictors. The results are used to derive empirical estimates of the consequences of disenfranchisement laws on various recent elections.
Vance Maverick 03.24.06 at 9:24 am
A felon is supposed to be someone whose crime was sufficiently heinous that he has lost the community’s trust forever.
“Is supposed to be”? I don’t remember picking this up.
eudoxis 03.24.06 at 9:32 am
It’s really hard to tell how much of an effect on elections the voter disenfrachisement has. (My position is to allow felons the vote.) Near every election, democrats start talking about children and felons, based on some nebulous assumptions about voter rationality. Voting behavior is rather unpredictable.
paul 03.24.06 at 10:42 am
A related issue is counting inmates’ residence as the jail they are in, for redistricting purposes. I am aware that this is an issue in NY state, where many inmates from down state and esp. NYC are now housed in rural counties upstate. They don’t vote but do inflate the upstate population figures, and deflate the downstate population figure, when districts for the state legislature are drawn. It is one way of watering down the Supreme Courts’ “1 man, 1 vote” ruling from the 1950s (1960s?).
I don’t know if this is also an issue across state lines, though I think (don’t know for sure) that the distribution of military bases (heavily in the south) may have similar effects.
The Supreme Court decision had significant consequences. VT has a reputation of being a very liberal, very blue state. Once upon a time, it was one of the most conservative states in the country, so much so that it turned down federal aid during the 30s on the grounds that it was inappropriate. The conventional explanation is that hippies and NYC liberals, moving there since the 1960s, changed the tenor of the state’s politics. I’ve read that a much more important influence was the Supreme Court decision. Before then, apportionment was roughly equal among similar political units. Burlington, the largest city in the state, had the same number of representatives in the legislature as any other city, and the range in population of units denoted cities was quite large. I don’t know the details, and if anyone who does wants to educate me, I’d welcome it.
perianwyr 03.24.06 at 10:52 am
Secondly, I’d like to remind you that the right to vote isn’t the only civil liberty convicted felons lose. There’s another remnant of Jim Crow infecting our legal system, which the left cheers, because you LIKE Jim Crow on that score: Deprivation of Second amendment rights.
I’m the left, and I care. Off you go. *ka-chunk*
saurabh 03.24.06 at 10:55 am
Don’t want to lose your voting rights? Don’t do the crimes.
This is one of the most annoying lines that gets thrown around in criminal justice debates. How far should we take our reductio ad absurdum? Let’s see… “Don’t want to be impaled on a stick and left in the desert so vultures and ants can eat your entrails? Don’t do the crimes.” I mean, come on. The whole point is that punishment should be commensurate with crime, or else why bother calling it “criminal justice” at all?
As to voting, disenfranchisement, if it’s a form of punishment, should surely be part of sentencing, as well. Is there a constitutional argument to be made here? Any lawyers in the house?
roger 03.24.06 at 12:59 pm
This follows an old pattern in the South. After the Civil War, one of the response of the white governing class after Reconstruction was to imprison blacks, both for their labor (continuing slavery in a new form) and as a form of political control.
Jim Miller 03.24.06 at 1:02 pm
Kieran Healy should worry less about this issue. As anyone who is familiar with the 2000 election in Florida (or the 2004 gubernatorial election here in Washington state) knows, many felons vote even when they have lost their right to do so. That felons, like college professors and journalists, tend to vote heavily Democratic may explain why these illegal votes have gotten so little attention.
There was an especially interesting example in Illinois a few years. Most of the residents of a single precinct lived in a halfway house for sex offenders. The vote there was heavily Democratic.
As for myself, I have long thought that losing the right to vote was a reasonable penalty for some crimes, some because of their severity, murder, for example, and others because they relate to elections. (I believe Maryland penalizes some kinds of vote fraud with the loss of the right to vote, and I would like to see other states do the same.)
lemuel pitkin 03.24.06 at 1:10 pm
Another aspect of this I’ve encountered knocking on doors here in New York (as I do every election season) is that many felons (or ex-offenders, which seems to be the preferred term) believe they have permanently lost the right to vote, even tho in fact NY only disenfranchises inmates and parollees. A basic reform here would be to inform people completing their sentence that they have the right to vote.
I assume this issue wasn’t addressed in the apaper, but my sense is it’s a serious one.
Thor Likes Pizza 03.24.06 at 2:00 pm
There are elements, powerful elements, in this great nation that never wanted the black man to get the vote.
Too fucking bad that we have this whole freedom thing after the civil war.
Too fucking bad that we had to endure this jim crow bullshit for years afterwards.
Too fucking bad that we had to deal with this ‘separate-but-equal’ bullshit for years afterwards.
Hell, look at georgia and the movement (yes, it is a movement) to make it more difficult for poor (read: black) folk to vote.
Yeah – don’t forget poll taxes.
The restriction of voting to ex-felons is part of the program to insure that none of dem nigrafolk get into the voting booth.
Like the marines – once a felon, always a felon.
I wonder if bernie ebbers (ex-CEO, MCI), duke cunningham or that asswipe from Tyco will lose their voting priviliges when they emerge from Club Fed.
jet 03.24.06 at 5:30 pm
Just more damage from the “War on Drugs”. If drugs were de-crimanlized 10’s of billions of dollars would be freed up for anti-drug advertising and then for treatment and rehabilitation programs. Never mind the ~60% of prisoners who wouldn’t be rotting in jail. Also this would scale back the DEA and ATF so that maybe they no longer have the power to destroy an innocent person’s life just be paying them a visit.
eweininger 03.24.06 at 11:47 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/25/opinion/25sat4.html
Anna in Cairo 03.26.06 at 3:49 am
I always thought voting was a citizen’s duty and responsibility, not a “right” or a “privilege.” Do felons also not have to pay taxes????
nick s 03.27.06 at 4:58 pm
As anyone who is familiar with the 2000 election in Florida (or the 2004 gubernatorial election here in Washington state) knows, many felons vote even when they have lost their right to do so.
Um, let’s go back through the looking-glass and recall that in Florida, thousands of non-felons were disenfranchised, as were those who had committed felonies in other states and were thus entitled to vote.
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