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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 12:23 pm
Time: 12:23 pm
Results for disenfranchisement
3 results foundAuthor: Forman, James Title: Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow Summary: In the last decade, a number of scholars have called the American criminal justice system a new form of Jim Crow. These writers have effectively drawn attention to the injustices created by a facially race-neutral system that severely ostracizes offenders and stigmatizes young, poor black men as criminals. This Article argues that despite these important contributions, the Jim Crow analogy leads to a distorted view of mass incarceration. The analogy presents an incomplete account of mass incarceration’s historical origins, fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes while focusing almost exclusively on drug crimes, obscures class distinctions within the African American community, and overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups. Finally, the Jim Crow analogy diminishes our collective memory of the Old Jim Crow’s particular harms. Details: New Haven, CT: Yale University School of Law, 2012. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper No. 243: Accessed June 27, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1966018 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1966018 Shelf Number: 125410 Keywords: African American Prisoners (U.S.)Civil RightsDisenfranchisementRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingUrban Poor |
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: Colgan, Beth Title: Wealth-Based Penal Disenfranchisement Summary: This Article offers the first comprehensive examination of the way in which the inability to pay economic sanctions-fines, fees, surcharges, and restitution—may prevent people of limited means from voting. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of penal disenfranchisement upon conviction, and all but two states revoke the right to vote for at least some offenses. The remaining jurisdictions allow for re-enfranchisement for most or all offenses under certain conditions. One often overlooked condition is payment of economic sanctions regardless of whether the would-be voter has the ability to pay before an election registration deadline. The scope of wealth-based penal disenfranchisement is grossly underestimated, with commentators typically stating that nine states sanction such practices. Through an in-depth examination of a tangle of statutes, administrative rules, and policies related to elections, clemency, parole, and probation, as well as responses from public disclosure requests and discussions with elections and corrections officials and other relevant actors, this Article reveals that wealth-based penal disenfranchisement is authorized in forty-eight states and the District of Columbia. After describing the mechanisms for wealth-based penal disenfranchisement, this Article offers a doctrinal intervention for dismantling them. There has been limited, and to date unsuccessful, litigation challenging these practices as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection and due process clauses. Because voting eligibility is stripped of its fundamental nature for those convicted of a crime, wealth-based penal disenfranchisement has been subject to the lowest level of scrutiny, rational basis review, leading lower courts to uphold the practice. This Article posits that these courts have approached the validity of wealth-based penal disenfranchisement through the wrong frame - the right to vote - when the proper frame is through the lens of punishment. This Article examines a line of cases in which the Court restricted governmental action that would result in disparate treatment between rich and poor in criminal justice practices, juxtaposing the cases against the Court's treatment of wealth-based discrimination in the Fourteenth Amendment doctrine and the constitutional relevance of indigency in the criminal justice system broadly. Doing so supports the conclusion that the Court has departed from the traditional tiers of scrutiny. The resulting test operates as a flat prohibition against the use of the government's prosecutorial power in ways that effectively punish one's financial circumstances unless no other alternative response could satisfy the government's interest in punishing the disenfranchising offense. Because such alternatives are available, wealth-based penal disenfranchisement would violate the Fourteenth Amendment under this approach. Details: Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law, 2019. 75p. Source: Internet Resource: UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 19-10: 72 Vand. L. Rev. 55 (2019): Accessed July 2, 2019 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3312439 Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3312439 Shelf Number: 156823 Keywords: DisenfranchisementDue ProcessEconomic SanctionsEqual ProtectionFines and FeesFourteenth AmendmentPovertySentencingVoting Rights |