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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
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Results for criminal disenfranchisement
8 results foundAuthor: Bronstein, Berjamin Title: Felony Disenfranchisement: An Annotated Bibliography Summary: While the right to vote is a cornerstone of American democracy, a substantial and growing population of citizens is restricted from participation in the electoral process. Current estimates suggest that about five million Americans are ineligible to vote as a result of having a felony conviction. Depending on the state in which they have been convicted, these people may be disenfranchised while incarcerated, on probation or parole, or even after completing a sentence. As a result of the dramatic expansion of the criminal justice system in recent decades, the number of people with convictions, and hence disenfranchised, is at a record high. Since the first modern-day estimates of the disenfranchised population were developed in the late 1990s, there has been a surge of policy reform activity around the country. Two dozen states have enacted various policy and practice reforms designed to either scale back the number of persons disenfranchised or remove some of the barriers to rights restoration. Along with this movement has come a new generation of scholarship on the issue of felony disenfranchisement. A wealth of studies and analyses have been produced in recent years that examine disenfranchisement from a variety of perspectives – law, social science, history, and journalism. Overall, these writings provide new estimates of the statistical impact of disenfranchisement, assess legal and moral perspectives on the policy, and place the issue in a comparative international context. This bibliography provides an overview of the scholarship on felony disenfranchisement over the past two decades. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2012. 25p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 30, 2012 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/vr_Felony_Disenfranchisement_Annotated_Bibliography.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/vr_Felony_Disenfranchisement_Annotated_Bibliography.pdf Shelf Number: 124768 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesCriminal DisenfranchisementFelony DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersVoting Rights |
Author: American Civil Liberties Union Title: Democracy Imprisoned: A review of the prevalence and impact of felony disenfranchisement laws in the United States Summary: This report has been authored by a coalition of non-profit organizations working on civil rights and criminal justice issues in the United States. The following organizations contributed to this report: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Florida, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and The Sentencing Project (collectively, the "Reporting Organizations"). Descriptions of each organization are attached as Appendix A. Some of the Reporting Organizations made List of Issues Submissions to the Human Rights Committee (the "Committee") in December 2012. This report updates items from those submissions and provides additional information to aid in the Committee's review of the United States' ("U.S." or "Government") felony disenfranchisement practices. As a supplement to those Submissions, this report includes an overview of the history of and rationale for felony disenfranchisement laws in the United States, considers the U.S.' disenfranchisement practices in the context of other nations, and discusses recent state law developments. After its review of the United States' second and third periodic report, the Committee expressed concern that the country's felony disenfranchisement practices have "significant racial implications." It also noted that "general deprivation of the right to vote for persons who have received a felony conviction, and in particular for those who are no longer deprived of liberty, do not meet the requirements of articles 25 and 26 of the Covenant, nor serves the rehabilitation goals of article 10(3)." The Reporting Organizations are encouraged by the Committee's interest in felony disenfranchisement practices in the United States and share the Committee's concerns about the extent to which these laws and their impact are consistent with the critical human rights protections enshrined in the Convention. The United States continues to lead the world in the rate of incarcerating its own citizens. The reach of the American correctional system has expanded over the course of the past half-century. In 1980, fewer than two million individuals were either incarcerated or on probation or parole; in 2011, that number was over seven million. Despite a decrease in the prison population over the past three years and substantial reform efforts in some states, the overall disenfranchisement rate has increased dramatically in conjunction with the growing U.S. corrections population, rising from 1.17 million in 1976 to 5.85 million by 2010. The growing incarceration rate has been mirrored by the disenfranchisement rate, which has increased by about 500% since 1980. The fact that felony disenfranchisement is so wide-reaching is deeply disturbing, and indicates that these laws undermine the open, participatory nature of our democratic process. Details: New York: ACLU, 2014. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 24, 2014 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_ICCPR%20Felony%20Disenfranchisement%20Shadow%20Report.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_ICCPR%20Felony%20Disenfranchisement%20Shadow%20Report.pdf Shelf Number: 133811 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesCriminal DisenfranchisementFelony Disenfranchisement Laws (U.S.)Felony OffendersPolitical Rights, Loss ofRacial DisparitiesVoting Rights |
Author: Wood, Erika Title: Florida: An Outlier in Denying Voting Rights Summary: In recent years, Americans have endured a wave of highly partisan and discriminatory voting restrictions passed in state legislatures across the country. These restrictions have drawn attention for the ways in which they make voting more difficult for many citizens — especially those who are low-income, minority, young, or old. The wave included strict voter ID laws, restrictions on voter registration, and laws to limit access to voter-friendly reforms like early voting. Challenges to those laws are ongoing in courts throughout the country, and their long-term fates are still at issue. But efforts to restrict the right to vote are not new in the United States, and few, if any, restrictions have endured for as long, and disenfranchised as many Americans, as criminal disenfranchisement laws. Across the nation, criminal disenfranchisement laws deny over 6 million Americans a say in our democracy. More than 4.7 million of these citizens have left prison and are in their communities — working, raising families, and paying taxes. At the same time, they remain blocked from joining their neighbors at the polls. People of color bear the brunt of the practice, with over 1 in 13 African Americans disenfranchised — one-third of the total denied the right to vote. Each state has different rules governing who can or cannot vote. In some places the rules are simple: 14 states plus D.C. automatically restore rights when an individual leaves incarceration. But others extend disenfranchisement well beyond prison. For instance, 20 states deny voting rights to people on parole or probation. That includes states like Georgia, where an estimated 250,000 citizens cannot vote, and Texas, where nearly 500,000 people currently cannot vote because of a criminal conviction. But no state disenfranchises more of its citizens than Florida. The state imposes a what for all practical purposes is a lifetime voting ban for people with past felony convictions. In total, more than 1.6 million people have lost their right to vote in Florida, including one in five African-American adults. And to get their voting rights back, citizens must wait five to seven years and submit an application with supporting documentation to the state's governor, who in recent years has denied all but a few hundred applicants out of tens of thousands. Mass disenfranchisement has severe consequences for Florida's communities. For instance, one study found that African Americans in communities subject to harsh disenfranchisement laws experience a decrease in turnout levels, regardless if they themselves were incarcerated. These costs come with no benefits for Florida's public safety. There is no connection between disenfranchisement and deterrence of future crime. Indeed, evidence from Florida suggests that voting makes criminal behavior less likely, explaining support for reform from figures in the law enforcement and corrections sectors. In this report, Professor Erika Wood of New York Law School makes the case against Florida's law — from its Jim Crow roots to its troubling present. Historical accounts make the law's original racist intent very clear. The most current data detail not only the millions of Floridians barred from the polls, but the way in which the state's system perpetuates their disenfranchisement and has even interfered with the voting rights of eligible citizens. This report explains the burden that Florida’s law places on both voters and the state itself, and the urgent need to finally replace it. Change is possible. It's happening throughout the country. Over the last two decades, more than 20 states have allowed more people with past convictions to vote, to vote sooner, or to access that right more easily. In 2016 alone, Maryland’s legislature enfranchised more than 40,000 people, Delaware removed financial barriers to rights restoration, and Virginia's governor committed to restoring voting rights for over 200,000 citizens. And more broadly, Americans are looking for ways to make our criminal justice system smarter, less punitive, and more rehabilitative. Today in Florida, citizens are calling for a ballot initiative to change the state's constitution and dramatically reform Florida's disenfranchisement policy. If successful, the change could restore voting rights to nearly one-quarter of America’s disenfranchised population. Details: New York: Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, 2016. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 19, 2016 at: Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 147757 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesCriminal DisenfranchisementFelony DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersRacial DistaritiesVoting Rights |
Author: Fredericksen, Allyson Title: Disenfranchised by Debt: Millions Impoverished By Prison, Blocked From Voting Summary: While most people over the age of 18 in the United States are guaranteed the right to vote, those with felony convictions who have served their sentence face a variety of barriers to voting, including, in many states, the requirement that they pay any outstanding fines and fees owed to the courts. This practice amounts to limiting the right to vote based on ability to pay - in essence, a poll tax. These fines and fees, called legal financial obligations (LFOs) can include those attached to a conviction or citation, or they can be from expenses accrued during incarceration - like the cost of laundry service. LFOs can also include interest accrued from the original fines and fees during incarceration or during repayment. There are 30 states that require all LFOs be paid in order for people with conviction records to regain the right to vote. While some of these states, like Connecticut, explicitly state that payment of LFOs is required to regain the right to vote, other states, like Kansas, require that probation be completed - which is contingent upon payment of all legal financial obligations. Additionally, some states include explicit language on LFOs in disenfranchisement laws and also have mechanisms that extend probation and/or parole if such fines and fees are left unpaid. Such a system not only allows those with means to pay off their debts to regain the right to vote earlier than those who cannot afford such payment, but it also perpetuates income and race-based inequality. People of color are more likely to be arrested, charged, and convicted, receive harsher sentences, and are more likely to be low-income than are their white counterparts, so are disproportionately impacted by a system that requires payment of LFOs to regain the right to vote after incarceration. Ending criminal disenfranchisement would be the best way to avoid the abuses and bureaucracies that limit voting rights for those with court debt. Short of that, there are a number of reforms that states could immediately implement to remove ability to pay as a barrier to voting. These reforms include eliminating both explicit and de facto LFO disenfranchisement for those who would otherwise be eligible to regain the right to vote; establishing clear criteria for determining ability to pay and adjusting total legal financial obligations or removing LFO repayment as a requirement for voting for those found unable to pay; and automatically registering anyone with a conviction record who becomes eligible to vote. Details: Seattle, WA: Alliance For A Just Society, 2016. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 15, 2017 at: http://allianceforajustsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Disenfranchised-by-Debt-FINAL-3.8.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://allianceforajustsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Disenfranchised-by-Debt-FINAL-3.8.pdf Shelf Number: 150547 Keywords: Court-Related Debt Criminal DisenfranchisementCriminal FeesCriminal Justice Debt DisenfranchisementFinancial SanctionsVoting Rights |
Author: American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Title: Unlock the Vote Wisconsin! Summary: The right to vote is what makes a country a true democracy, and it is the most basic right Americans share. The U.S. Census Bureau reported historically high levels of voter turnout by African-American, Latino, and young voters in the 2008 Presidential Election . Unfortunately, in the wake of that success, conservative lawmakers nationwide have erected more barriers to the ballot box. States are making it harder and harder for people to vote, virtually guranteeing that many people won't really have the right at all. Poll taxes and literacy tests have given way to more modern voter suppression tactics packaged as voter ID laws, restrictions to voter registration and cuts to early voting. With these new laws in effect, up to 5 million voters could be turned away at the polls in November 2012. The national trend to disenfranchise voters has impacted some of the same groups that saw increased turnout in 2008: communities of color and young voters. However, there is a group that has a longer history of disenfranchisement: individuals with felony convictions. Felon disfranchisement, the set of policies and practices barring individuals with criminal convictions from the ballot box, is the most significant barrier to political participation for people with criminal records across the country. Nationally, 5.3 million Americans are barred from voting due to criminal convictions. Nearly 4 million of those disfranchised are no longer incarcerated and are members of our communities.iii Wisconsin law bars individuals with with felony convictions from voting while incarcerated and while on probation, parole or extended supervision. In 2009, the Wisconsin State Legislature considered legislation, known as the Wisconsin Democracy Restoration Act, which sought to restore the right to vote upon release from incarceration. Wisconsin Assembly Bill 353 and its companion State Senate Bill 240 would have enfranchised over 42,000 Wisconsin citizens who live in the community, work and pay taxes, but are unable to participate in the political process. These individuals are from all walks of life, men and women of all races, religions, and political backgrounds who have been deemed safe enough to return to our communities but continue to be barred from the ballot box. Ninety-seven percent of Wisconsin's incarcerated population will one day be released from prison.iv We must encourage these individuals to participate in their communities, not prevent them from doing so. Wisconsin's current policy of continuing to disfranchise citizens after their release from incarceration is a financial drain on all Wisconsinites, does nothing to enhance public safety, and is an impediment to democracy. There is support from voters throughout the state for reforming this unfair practice, and Wisconsin should move quickly to change its law in favor of greater democracy Details: Milwaukee, WI: ACLU of Wisconsin, 2012. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 4, 2017 at: https://www.aclu-wi.org/sites/default/files/resources/documents/ACLU_Unlock_the_Vote_WI_2012.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: https://www.aclu-wi.org/sites/default/files/resources/documents/ACLU_Unlock_the_Vote_WI_2012.pdf Shelf Number: 141334 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesCriminal DisenfranchisementFelony DisenfranchisementVoting Rights |
Author: Kelley, Erin Title: Racism & Felony Disenfranchisement: An Intertwined History Summary: The United States stands alone among modern democracies in stripping voting rights from millions of citizens on the basis of criminal convictions. Across the country, states impose varying felony disenfranchisement policies, preventing an estimated 6.1 million Americans from casting ballots. To give a sense of scope - this population is larger than the voting-eligible population of New Jersey. And of this total, nearly 4.7 million are people living in our communities - working, paying taxes, and raising families, all while barred from joining their neighbors at the polls. This widespread disenfranchisement disproportionately impacts people of color.5 One in every 13 voting-age African Americans cannot vote, a disenfranchisement rate more than four times greater than that of all other Americans. In four states, more than one in five black adults are denied their right to vote. Although the data on Latino disenfranchisement is less comprehensive, a 2003 study of ten states ranging in size from California to Nebraska found that nine of those states "disenfranchise the Latino community at rates greater than the general population." While the origins of disenfranchisement can be traced back to early colonial law in North America, and even farther back to ancient Greece, the punishment was typically applied only in individual cases for particularly serious or elections-related crimes. It wasn't until the end of the Civil War and the expansion of suffrage to black men that felony disenfranchisement became a significant barrier to U.S. ballot boxes. At that point, two interconnected trends combined to make disenfranchisement a major obstacle for newly enfranchised black voters. First, lawmakers - especially in the South - implemented a slew of criminal laws designed to target black citizens. And nearly simultaneously, many states enacted broad disenfranchisement laws that revoked voting rights from anyone convicted of any felony. These two trends laid the foundation for the form of mass disenfranchisement seen in this country today. Details: New York: Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, 2017. 6p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 7, 2017 at: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/Disenfranchisement_History.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/Disenfranchisement_History.pdf Shelf Number: 146769 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesCriminal DisenfranchisementFelony DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersRacial DisparitiesVoting Rights |
Author: Behan, Cormac Title: Punishment, prisoners and the franchise Summary: In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK law banning all convicted prisoners from voting contravened the European Convention on Human Rights. Despite numerous court cases - both domestic and European - extensive consultations and a parliamentary committee established specifically to consider the issue, successive UK governments have rejected this judgment and resisted changing the law to allow prisoners access to the franchise. This paper begins by considering the key arguments for and against the enfranchisement of prisoners, many of which have been used in the debates on the issue. It analyses why prisoner voting has caused so much controversy in the UK and why parliament continues to maintain a blanket ban. It examines the experience of prisoner voting in other jurisdictions and finds little evidence for the contention that allowing prisoners access to the franchise will have a detrimental impact on the democratic process. It concludes with an argument in favour of allowing prisoners to vote. Details: London: The Howard League for Penal Reform, 2015. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: Howard League What is Justice? Working Papers 20/2015: Accessed November 28, 2017 at: http://howardleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/HLWP_20_2015.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://howardleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/HLWP_20_2015.pdf Shelf Number: 148517 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesCriminal DisenfranchisementFelony DisenfranchisementVoting Rights |
Author: American Civil Liberties Union Title: Out of Step with the World: An Analysis of Felony Disfranchisement in the U.S. and Other Democracies Summary: Well over 100 years ago, the Supreme Court concluded in Yick Wo v. Hopkins that the right to vote is "fundamental" because it is "preservative of all rights." Even the most basic civil rights, the Court has said, "are illusory if the right to vote is undermined." Foreign courts examining voting rights cases frequently cite American voting rights jurisprudence. Yet, the United States bars from the vote nearly 5.3 million American citizens on the grounds that they committed a crime, although most committed nonviolent offenses and only a quarter are in prison or jail, with three-quarters either on probation or parole or having completed sentences. Particularly since the contested presidential election of 2000, American laws barring people with criminal convictions from voting have come under considerable public scrutiny. In the United States, each state has its own criminal disfranchisement law. In two states people retain the right to vote even while incarcerated, but policies in the other 48 states and the District of Columbia range from disqualification for incarcerated felons to lifetime bans on voting: 48 states bar prison inmates from voting; 36 bar convicted felons from voting while on parole, 31 of these states also excluding felony probationers from voting; 3 states prohibit all ex-felons from voting even after they have fully completed their sentences, and another 9 states permanently restrict from voting those convicted of specific offenses, or require a post-sentence waiting period for some offenders. While disfranchisement policies have been in effect for many years, they are affecting a growing segment of the population, as the United States' criminal justice system continues to convict and imprison more people than ever before. The United States now incarcerates over 2 million people, at a rate of 702 per 100,000. (Including those on parole or probation, or housed in jails, the U.S. has more than 6 million people under some form of criminal supervision.) This incarceration rate is 5-8 times that in comparable industrialized nations, western Europe (e.g., Germany: 97; England & Wales: 144 and Canada: 107). If current trends continue, black males would have a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes; Hispanics, 1 in 6, and whites, 1 in 17. And though American disfranchisement policies keep a large segment of the entire population from the voting booth, they have a disproportionate impact on African Americans and other minorities. While disfranchisement policies prevent 2.5% of the total population from voting, they prevent 13% of the total population of African American men from casting a ballot. States have begun to alter their disfranchisement rules in the last few years, motivated by concerns about the policy's uneasy relationship with modern American ideas about the right to vote, its illdefined punitive purposes, or its linkages to the racial inequities of the U.S. criminal-justice system. As citizens, lawmakers, and judges in the United States and elsewhere consider the wisdom of laws barring people with criminal convictions from voting, relatively little detailed information has been available about similar policies - or the lack thereof - in other democracies. This report has been written in the hope of improving our understanding of disfranchisement law in the twenty-first century, with a particular eye towards enriching the ongoing discussion of disfranchisement law in the United States - a democracy that has very unusual policies in this area. This report offers the first in-depth analysis of the criminal disfranchisement policies of the world's democracies, with a focus on Europe. (We do also examine, though perhaps not in the same depth, other developed democracies' policies and precedents, namely those of Israel, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.) Simply describing these laws accurately has proven a surprisingly difficult task; a few previous authors have attempted to do so, focusing their attention mostly on documents such as constitutions and election-law statutes.6 We have drawn on their important work here, but have found that constitutions and statutes alone often fail to deliver a full understanding of a given country's disfranchisement policies and practices. In addition to such formal legal sources, this report benefits from exhaustive research into legislative materials, judicial proceedings, advocacy reports, and numerous other sources, including information from original surveys and interviews with governmental and non-governmental officials of several countries. No previous publication has synthesized so much country-by-country disfranchisement data, decisions of high courts, and international legal instruments. Following this Introduction, Section II of the report describes the policies of European nations, and Section III offers detailed summaries of the decisions rendered by various countries' constitutional courts in the last decade. Section IV examines mechanisms used in various democracies to implement prisoner voting, and Section V considers treaties and other legal instruments, both binding and advisory, which bear on the voting rights of people with criminal convictions. These are among the central findings of this study: - Almost half of European countries allow all incarcerated people to vote while others disqualify only a small number of prisoners from the polls. As we explain below, almost all of the countries that disqualify all inmates are in Eastern Europe. - In most countries where disfranchisement does exist, the policy is both more narrowly targeted and more visible in its application than in the United States. - A number of treaties and other types of international instruments support either the abolition of criminal disfranchisement law, or considerably narrower restrictions than those employed by most American states. - All foreign constitutional courts that have evaluated disfranchisement law have found the automatic, blanket disqualification of prisoners to violate basic democratic principles. In countries where courts have called for enfranchisement of inmates, the legislative and executive branches have complied without significant resistance. - Where prisoners are allowed to vote, they do so either in the correctional facilities themselves - with no threat to security - or by some version of absentee ballot, in their town of previous residence, in all cases with government entities facilitating the voting. In no country do prisoners vote in a manner that allows them to shape the politics of the prison locality. Readers will have different responses to this evidence. Some will deduce from the widespread and unproblematic fact of prisoner voting elsewhere that the United States should promptly overhaul its policies. Others may scoff, perhaps having already concluded that the ideas and policies of other countries are and should remain irrelevant to the American political context. We believe no less an authority than the American Declaration of Independence counsels against the latter conclusion. As Jefferson famously wrote, "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires" that we be able to explain the reasons for our policies to others. While it is not our view that the international setting alone justifies a change in American law, we do argue that the evidence compiled here should induce greater skepticism about the wisdom of disfranchisement law in the United States. In our view, this evidence, coupled with the serious and extensive problems these laws pose for both the officials administering them and those affected by them, counsels in favor of rethinking the broad bans and replacing them with rational, tailored bans, or none at all. Given the relative ease (and low cost) of administering absentee ballot voting in prisons, states may want to seriously consider the examples of Maine, Vermont and Puerto Rico. Or, following the example of some European democracies, consider barring only those it makes sense to bar - for example, those convicted of election fraud. Another possibility would be to enfranchise all except the incarcerated, with no documentary requirement complicating reinstatement on the rolls after release from prison. Although such a policy now survives only in the most regressive European nations, it would constitute a significant movement forward for most American states, given how far out of step the United States is on this issue. Moreover, inmate-only disfranchisement - if you are able to appear physically at the polls and meet age and residency requirements, you are eligible to vote - would solve the multitude of problems now bedeviling the administration of disfranchisement policies in the U.S. Details: New York: ACLU, 2006. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 18, 2018 at: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/asset_upload_file825_25663.pdf Year: 2006 Country: International URL: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/asset_upload_file825_25663.pdf Shelf Number: 117111 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesCriminal DisenfranchisementFelony Disenfranchisement Felony OffendersRacial DisparitiesVoting Rights |