Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:23 pm
Time: 9:23 pm
Results for voting rights
24 results foundAuthor: Brown-Dean, Khalilah L. Title: One Lens, Multiple Views: Felon Disenfranchisement Laws and American Political Inequality Summary: Felon disenfranchisement laws prohibit current, and in many states, former felony offenders from voting. Of particular interest to my research, 36% of the citizens permanently unable to vote are African Americans. It is important to note that state laws determine who is eligible to vote. States have the option of disenfranchising felons while in prison, while on parole, on probation, or for a lifetime. This dissertation combines traditional democratic theory with elements of the racial group competition literatures to form a lens for understanding the historical use and contemporary consequences of criminal disenfranchisement laws. Using a multi-method approach combining archival research, experiments, and cross-sectional analyses, the findings of this research contradict much of the existing literature's assertion that racial minorities have successfully overcome the institutional barriers to full participation. In essence, these findings affirm the extent to which criminal control policies have become a powerful means of promoting the politics of exclusion. Using an original state-level data set, I find that the level of minority diversity and region are the most significant determinants of the severity of states' disenfranchisement laws. In particular, I find that southern states and states with more sizeable Black and Hispanic voting-age populations tend to have more severe restrictions on felon voting. I find that elite discourse surrounding disenfranchisement has evolved from an explicit focus on race and racial discrimination to a more subtle priming of racial group considerations and stereotypes. Combining these findings with the experimental data, I find that public support for felon disenfranchisement is influenced by the frames elites use to discuss them. When disenfranchisement laws are presented as a threat to democratic vitality, citizens' support for them tends to be lower. However, when disenfranchisement is presented as a means of punishing those who have broken the public trust, support is higher. These findings confirm the importance of political elites for helping citizens make sense of complex political issues. Taken together, the research presented in this dissertation supports the view that the racial group competition lens illuminates multiple views regarding the limits of citizenship as well as contemporary barriers to political equality. Details: Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, Department of Political Science, 2003. 264p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed August 24, 2011 at: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/BrownDean%20Khalilah%20L.pdf?osu1054744924 Year: 2003 Country: United States URL: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/BrownDean%20Khalilah%20L.pdf?osu1054744924 Shelf Number: 122480 Keywords: Felon DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersVoting Rights |
Author: Wood, Erika Title: De Facto Disenfranchisement Summary: Voting is both a fundamental right and a civic duty. However there remains a significant blanket barrier to the franchise: 5.3 million American citizens are not allowed to vote because of criminal convictions. As many as four million of these people live, work, and raise families in our communities, but because of convictions in their past they are still denied the right to vote. State laws vary widely on when voting rights are restored. Maine and Vermont do not deny the franchise based on a criminal conviction; even prisoners may vote there. Kentucky and Virginia are the last two states to continue to permanently disenfranchise all people with felony convictions unless they receive individual, discretionary clemency from the governor. The remaining 46 states fall somewhere in between, with the varied state laws forming a patchwork across the country. Some states restore voting rights upon release from prison, others upon completion of probation and parole, and others impose waiting periods or other contingencies and categories before restoring voting rights. This disenfranchisement by law of millions of American citizens is only half the story. Across the country there is persistent confusion among election officials about their state’s felony disenfranchisement policies. Election officials receive little or no training on these laws, and there is little or no coordination or communication between election offices and the criminal justice system. These factors, coupled with complex laws and complicated registration procedures, result in the mass dissemination of inaccurate and misleading information, which in turn leads to the de facto disenfranchisement of untold hundreds of thousands of eligible would-be voters throughout the country. De facto disenfranchisement has devastating long-term effects in communities across the country. Once a single local election official misinforms a citizen that he is not eligible to vote because of a past conviction, it is unlikely that citizen will ever follow up or make a second inquiry. Without further public education or outreach, the citizen will mistakenly believe that he is ineligible to vote for years, decades, or maybe the rest of his life. And that same citizen may pass along that same inaccurate information to his peers, family members and neighbors, creating a lasting ripple of de facto disenfranchisement across his community. Between 2003 and 2008, the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice, together with our state partners, conducted interviews with election officials in 15 states to determine the level of knowledge of their state’s felony disenfranchisement law. This report summarizes the results of telephone interviews conducted in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington. Prior to conducting interviews in each state, the ACLU and the Brennan Center performed a thorough legal analysis of the state’s felony disenfranchisement law. A separate set of questions was designed for each state based on the state law and the specific information sought in the state. The same questions were asked of each election official in the state and their answers were carefully documented along with the official’s name and the date and time of the interview. Where feasible, we interviewed a representative of every local election office in each state. In states where a large number of localities made this difficult, a representative sample was identified. The interviews revealed an alarming national trend of de facto disenfranchisement: Election officials do not understand the basic voter eligibility rules governing people with criminal convictions; Election officials do not understand the basic registration procedures for people with criminal convictions; Interviewers experienced various problems communicating with election officials, including repeated unanswered telephone calls and bureaucratic runaround. Details: American Civil Liberties Union, 2008. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 29, 2012 at http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/racialjustice/defactodisenfranchisement_report.pdf Year: 2008 Country: United States URL: http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/racialjustice/defactodisenfranchisement_report.pdf Shelf Number: 124332 Keywords: Felon DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersVoting Rights |
Author: Mauer, Marc Title: To Build a Better Criminal Justice System: 25 Experts Envision the Next 25 Years of Reform Summary: In a new publication of The Sentencing Project 25 leading scholars and practitioners have contributed essays on their strategic vision for the next 25 years of criminal justice reform. Issues addressed in the collection include racial justice strategies, linking public health and criminal justice reform, challenging the war on drugs, and the viability of fiscal pressures as a focus for reform. Details: Washington, D.C.: The Sentencing Project, 2012. 68p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 21, 2012 at http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/sen_25_eassys.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/sen_25_eassys.pdf Shelf Number: 124637 Keywords: Administration of JusticeCriminal Justice ReformCriminal Justice SystemsDrug PolicyIncarcerationJuvenile JusticeRacial DisparitySentencing ReformVoting Rights |
Author: 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: Uggen, Christopher Title: State-Level Estimates of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 2010 Summary: The United States is one of the world’s strictest nations when it comes to denying the right to vote to citizens convicted of crimes. A remarkable 5.85 million Americans are forbidden to vote because of “felon disenfranchisement,” or laws restricting voting rights for those convicted of felony-level crimes. In this election year, the question of voting restrictions is once again receiving great public attention. This report is intended to update and expand our previous work on the scope and distribution of felon disenfranchisement in the United States (see Uggen and Manza 2002; Manza and Uggen 2006). The numbers presented here represent our best assessment of the state of felon disenfranchisement as of December 31, 2010, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Our goal is to provide statistics that will help contextualize and anticipate the potential effects of felon disenfranchisement on elections in November 2012. T Our key findings include the following: Approximately 2.5 percent of the total U.S. voting age population – 1 of every 40 adults – is disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction. Ex-felons in the eleven states that disenfranchise people after they have completed their sentences make up about 45 percent of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling over 2.6 million people. The number of people disenfranchised due to a felony conviction has escalated dramatically in recent decades as the population under criminal justice supervision has increased. There were an estimated 1.17 million people disenfranchised in 1976, 3.34 million in 1996, and over 5.85 million in 2010. Rates of disenfranchisement vary dramatically by state due to broad variations in voting prohibitions. In six states – Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia – more than 7 percent of the adult population is disenfranchised. 1 of every 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than non-African Americans. Nearly 7.7 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non-African American population. African American disenfranchisement rates also vary significantly by state. In three states – Florida (23 percent), Kentucky (22 percent), and Virginia (20 percent) – more than one in five African Americans is disenfranchised. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2012. 21p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 13, 2012 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_State_Level_Estimates_of_Felon_Disen_2010.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_State_Level_Estimates_of_Felon_Disen_2010.pdf Shelf Number: 125608 Keywords: Ex-ConvictsEx-Offenders, Rights ofFelon Disenfranchisement (U.S.)Voting 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: Uggen, Christopher Title: 6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016 Summary: In this election year, the question of voting restrictions is once again receiving great public attention. This report is intended to update and expand our previous work on the scope and distribution of felony disenfranchisement in the United States (see Uggen, Shannon, and Manza 2012; Uggen and Manza 2002; Manza and Uggen 2006). The numbers presented here represent our best assessment of the state of felony disenfranchisement as of the November 2016 election. Our key findings include the following: - As of 2016, an estimated 6.1 million people are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, a figure that has escalated dramatically in recent decades as the population under criminal justice supervision has increased. There were an estimated 1.17 million people disenfranchised in 1976, 3.34 million in 1996, and 5.85 million in 2010. - Approximately 2.5 percent of the total U.S. voting age population - 1 of every 40 adults - is disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction. - Individuals who have completed their sentences in the twelve states that disenfranchise people post-sentence make up over 50 percent of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling almost 3.1 million people. - Rates of disenfranchisement vary dramatically by state due to broad variations in voting prohibitions. In six states - Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia - more than 7 percent of the adult population is disenfranchised. - The state of Florida alone accounts for more than a quarter (27 percent) of the disenfranchised population nationally, and its nearly 1.5 million individuals disenfranchised post-sentence account for nearly half (48 percent) of the national total. - One in 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than that of non-African Americans. Over 7.4 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non-African American population. - African American disenfranchisement rates also vary significantly by state. In four states - Florida (21 percent), Kentucky (26 percent), Tennessee (21 percent), and Virginia (22 percent) - more than one in five African Americans is disenfranchised. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2016. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 24, 2016 at: http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016/ Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016/ Shelf Number: 140825 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesEx-OffendersFelony DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersRacial DisparitiesVoting Rights |
Author: Mungan, Murat C. Title: Disenfranchisement and Over-Incarceration Summary: Disenfranchisement laws in many states prohibit convicted felons from voting. The removal of ex-convicts from the pool of eligible voters reduces the pressure politicians may otherwise face to protect the interests of this group. In particular, disenfranchisement laws may cause the political process to push the sentences for criminal offenses upwards. In this article, I construct a simple model with elected law enforcers who propose sentences to maximize their likelihood of election. I show, with the help of the median voter theorem, that even without disenfranchisement, elections typically generate over-incarceration, i.e. longer than optimal sentences. Disenfranchisement further widens the gap between the optimal sentence and the equilibrium sentence, and thereby exacerbates the problem of over-incarceration. Moreover, this result is valid even when voter turnout is negatively correlated with people's criminal tendencies, i.e. when criminals vote less frequently than non-criminals. Details: Arlington, VA: George Mason University - Antonin Scalia Law School, 2016. 15p. Source: Internet Resource: George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 16-43 : Accessed November 21, 2016 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2863035 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2863035 Shelf Number: 140231 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesFelony DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersMass IncarcerationVoting 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: van den Bergh, Tim Title: Collateral Consequences of Incarceration: the Racial, Social and Political Impact of Felon Disenfranchisement in Iowa between 2005-2016 Summary: Universal suffrage legitimizes democratic governance. The establishment of a repressive United States criminal justice system, however, has imposed strict qualifications on the right to vote. Signified by racialized mass incarceration, the punitive law and order regime of the late 20th century has led to a crisis of incarceration that leaves more than 5 million Americans disenfranchised today. This paper maintains that felon disenfranchisement in the United States carries detrimental consequences for (ex-) felons' processes of reintegration and moreover suggests that criminal voter disqualification contributes to increased racialized social stratification. Moreover, this paper studies the public policy of felon disenfranchisement at an intersection of punishment, race and citizenship discourse while applying theoretical frames consistent with social conflict and critical race theory. By use of the state of Iowa as a case study, I find that the collateral consequences of a felony conviction dilute the voting strength of racial minorities and have a significant impact on both regional and national American politics. This impact is potentially influenced by all three branches of government, making the political practice of felon disenfranchisement is a suitable topic for studying the role of power relations and racial conflict in American political development. Details: Nijmegen, Netherlands; Radboud University, 2016. 98p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed May 24, 2017 at: http://theses.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/123456789/3678/Bergh,%20Tim%20van%20den%204554817.pdf?sequence=1 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://theses.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/123456789/3678/Bergh,%20Tim%20van%20den%204554817.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 145756 Keywords: Criminal Record Felon Disenfranchisement Voting 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: White, Ariel R. Title: Voter Behavior in the Wake of Punitive Policies Summary: Millions of people in the US have direct experience with the machinery of immigration enforcement or criminal courts, and millions more have seen family members, friends, or neighbors face these experiences. What do these experiences mean for political behavior in the United States? Do these proximate observers decide that government is a dangerous and capricious force to be avoided, and withdraw from political participation entirely? Or is there sometimes a mobilization response, where some people organize to push back against what they see as unjust government actions? This is an important policy feedback story. Large-scale punitive policies could either "lock themselves in" via community disengagement, or hasten their own demise by fueling political responses. The three papers of this dissertation examine policies at varying distances (people living in an area where the policy is introduced, those directly affected, and those living with people directly affected), and with different time-frames and geographic coverage. The results of these papers, and the approach of using administrative datasets and finding causal leverage from "natural experiments," point us toward a new understanding of policy feedbacks. In the first paper, I find that Latino voters living in counties where a new deportation program was introduced before the 2010 election became more likely to vote. This effect seems driven not by personal experience seeing deportation activities, but by activists mobilizing voters in affected counties. In the second paper, I use random courtroom assignment to measure the causal effect of short jail sentences (from misdemeanor cases) on voting. I find that even short jail sentences can deter people from voting in the next election, with particularly large effects among black voters. In the third paper, I find that the household members of incarcerated people also become several percentage points less likely to vote. This finding is particularly striking given the narrow scope of the effect measured: this is only the additional effect of seeing a household member jailed for a short period, among a set of people that have already seen their household member arrested and charged with a crime. Details: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2016. 127p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed September 19, 2017 at: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33493481/WHITE-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf?sequence=1 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33493481/WHITE-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 147411 Keywords: Collateral ConsequencesDeportation PolicyFelony DisenfranchisementImmigrantsImmigration EnforcementPoliticsVoting 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 |
Author: Meredith, Marc Title: Discretionary Disenfranchisement: The Case of Legal Financial Obligations Summary: Appellate courts generally dismiss objections about tying legal financial obligations (LFOs) to the right to vote, at least in part because of the limited, anecdotal evidence available about the nature of LFO assessment and payback. We undertake a massive data collection effort to detail the type, burden, and disparate impact of criminal debt for a representative, statewide samples in Alabama. The median amount of LFOs assessed to discharged felons in Alabama across all of their criminal convictions is $3,956, more than half of which stems from court fees. People utilizing a public defender and blacks are about 15 and 9 percentage points (p.p) more likely to have an outstanding LFO balance, respectively, than people utilizing a private attorney and non-blacks. Consequentially, blacks are about 26 p.p. more likely than non-blacks to have their voting rights restoration applications denied because of outstanding LFOs. Details: Unpublished paper, 2017. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 15, 2018 at: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~marcmere/workingpapers/DiscretionaryLFOs.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~marcmere/workingpapers/DiscretionaryLFOs.pdf Shelf Number: 150188 Keywords: Criminal Justice Debt Ex-Offenders Felon Disenfranchisement Felony OffendersVoting Rights |
Author: Sentencing Project Title: Expanding the Vote: Two Decades of Felony Disenfranchisement Reforms Summary: More than 6 million citizens will be ineligible to vote in the midterm elections in November 2018 because of a felony conviction. Nearly 4.7 million of them are not incarcerated but live in one of 34 states that prohibit voting by people on probation, parole, or who have completed their sentence. Racial disparities in the criminal justice system also translate into higher rates of disenfranchisement in communities of color, resulting in one of every thirteen African American adults being ineligible to vote. Despite these stark statistics, in recent years significant reforms in felony disenfranchisement policies have been achieved at the state level. Since 1997, 23 states have amended their felony disenfranchisement policies in an effort to reduce their restrictiveness and expand voter eligibility. These reforms include: Seven states either repealed or amended lifetime disenfranchisement laws Six states expanded voting rights to some or all persons under community supervision Seventeen states eased the restoration process for persons seeking to have their right to vote restored after completing sentence These policy changes represent national momentum for reform of restrictive voting rights laws. As a result of the reforms achieved during the period from 1997-2018, an estimated 1.4 million people have regained the right to vote. This report provides a state by state accounting of the changes to voting rights for people with felony convictions and measures its impact. These changes have come about through various mechanisms, including legislative reform, executive action, and a ballot initiative. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2018. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 13, 2018 at: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/expanding-vote-two-decades-felony-disenfranchisement-reforms/ Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/expanding-vote-two-decades-felony-disenfranchisement-reforms/ Shelf Number: 153414 Keywords: Collateral Consequences Criminal Disenfranchisement Felony Disenfranchisement Felony Offenders Racial Disparities Voting Rights |
Author: Advancement Project Title: Democracy Disappeared: How Florida Silences the Black Vote through Felony Disenfranchisement Summary: Democracy Disappeared: How Florida Silences the Black Vote through Felony Disenfranchisement provides an unprecedented analysis of Black neighborhoods and Floridas historic problem of felony disenfranchisement. In a neighborhood-level analysis, this report published by Advancement Project's national office, shows that Floridas formerly incarcerated residents overwhelmingly return to Black neighborhoods that have disparate levels of income, employment, education and child poverty compared to the rest of the state. The analysis shows a relationship between the number of Returning Citizens permanently disenfranchised under current Florida law and poor socio-economic conditions in a neighborhood. Through the stories of Returning Citizens and data, Democracy Disappeared shows how challenging circumstances are when people return home. It also maps how those neighborhoods are harmed by the states denial of voting rights to 1.6 million people with prior felony convictions. Details: Florida: Advancement Project, 2018. 66p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 18, 2018 at: https://advancementproject.org/democracydisappeared/ Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: http://advancementproject.org/wp-content/uploads/DDUpdated/index.html#page=1 Shelf Number: 154033 Keywords: Black Neighborhoods Felony Convictions Felony Disenfranchisement Florida Formerly Incarcerated Returning Citizens Voting Rights |
Author: Love, Margaret Title: Reducing Barriers to Reintegration: Fair Chance and Expungement Reforms in 2018 Summary: Executive Summary In 2018, 30 states and the District of Columbia produced 56 separate laws aimed at reducing barriers faced by people with criminal records in the workplace, at the ballot box, and elsewhere. Many of these new laws enacted more than one type of reform. This prolific legislative "fair chance" track record, the high point of a sixyear trend, reflects the lively on-going national conversation about how best to promote rehabilitation and reintegration of people with a criminal record. As in past years, approaches to restoring rights varied widely from state to state, both with respect to the type of relief, as well as the specifics of who is eligible, how relief is delivered, and the effect of relief. Despite a growing consensus about the need for policy change to alleviate collateral consequences, little empirical research has been done to establish best practices, or what works best to promote reintegration. The most promising legislative development recognizes the key role occupational licensing plays in the process of reintegration, and it was this area that showed the greatest uniformity of approach. Of the 14 states that enacted laws regulating licensing in 2018, nine (added to 4 in 2017) adopted a similar comprehensive framework to improve access to occupational licenses for people with a criminal record, limiting the kinds of records that may be considered, establishing clear criteria for administrative decisions, and making agency procedures more transparent and accountable. The most consequential single new law was a Florida ballot initiative to restore the franchise to 1.5 million people with a felony conviction, which captured headlines across the country when it passed with nearly 65 percent of voters in favor. Voting rights were also restored for parolees, by statute in Louisiana and by executive order in New York. The largest number of new laws - 27 statutes in 19 states - expanded access to sealing or expungement, by extending eligibility to additional categories of offenses and persons, by reducing waiting periods, or by simplifying procedures. A significant number of states addressed record clearing for non-conviction records (including diversions), for marijuana or other decriminalized offenses, for juveniles, and for human trafficking victims. For the first time, the disadvantages of a separate petition-based relief system were incorporated into legislative discussions. Four states established automated or systemic record-sealing mechanisms aimed at eliminating a "second chance gap" which occurs when a separate civil action must be filed. Pennsylvania's "clean slate" law is the most ambitious experiment in automation to date. Other states sought to incorporate relief directly into the criminal case, avoiding the Pennsylvania law's technological challenges. Three additional states acted to prohibit public employers from inquiring about criminal history during the initial stages of the hiring process, Washington by statute, and Michigan and Kansas by executive order. Washington extended the prohibition to private employers as well. A total of 33 states and the District of Columbia now have so-called "ban-the-box" laws, and 11 states extend the ban to private employers. Four states expanded eligibility for judicial certificates of relief. Colorado's "order of collateral relief" is now the most extensive certificate law in the nation, available for almost all crimes as early as sentencing, and effective to bar consideration of conviction in public employment and licensing. Arizona, California, and North Carolina made more modest changes to facilitate access to this judicial "forgiving" relief. The District of Columbia established a clemency board to recommend to the President applications for pardon and commutation by D.C. Code offenders. Governors in California and New York used their pardon power to spare dozens of non-citizens from deportation, and California also streamlined its pardon process and made it more transparent. Moving in the other direction, Nebraska authorized sealing of pardoned convictions, and Maine made both pardon applications and pardon grants confidential. The legal landscape at the end of 2018 suggests that states are experimenting with a more nuanced blending of philosophical approaches to dealing with the collateral consequences of arrest and conviction. These approaches include forgiving people's past crimes (through pardon or judicial dispensation), forgetting them (through record-sealing or expungement), or forgoing creating a record in the first place (through diversionary dispositions). While sealing and expungement remain the most popular forms of remedy, there seems to be both popular and institutional resistance to limiting what the public may see respecting the record of serious offenses, and a growing preference for more transparent restoration mechanisms that limit what the public may do with such a record, along with standards to guide administrative decisionmaking. Details: New York, NY: Collateral Consequences Resource Center, 2019. 51p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 11, 2019 at: http://ccresourcecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Fair-chance-and-expungement-reforms-in-2018-CCRC-Jan-2019.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: http://ccresourcecenter.org/2019/01/10/press-release-new-report-on-2018-fair-chance-and-expungement-reforms/ Shelf Number: 154132 Keywords: Ban the BoxClean Slate LawCriminal RecordExpungementFair ChanceFelony ConvictionParoleesRecord SealingRehabilitationReintegrationRestoring RightsVoting Rights |
Author: Shineman, Victoria Title: Restoring Rights, Restoring Trust: Evidence that Reversing Felon Disenfranchisement Penalties Increases Both Trust and Cooperation with Government Summary: Felon disenfranchisement laws restrict the voting rights of more than 6 million US Citizens. Beyond the effects on voter turnout and electoral outcomes, how do these laws affect individual-level attitudes and behaviors? This study implements two field experiments embedded within panel surveys conducted before and after statewide elections in Ohio and Virginia. The survey population is composed of US citizens with felony convictions who were once disenfranchised, but are now either eligible to vote, or to have their voting rights restored. Experimental treatments provide varying assistance with the restoration of voting rights and voter registration. Treated subjects report stronger trust in government and the criminal justice system, and an increased willingness to cooperate with law enforcement. The results suggest that reversing disenfranchisement causes newly enfranchised citizens to increase their pro-democratic attitudes and behaviors - all of which are predictors of reduced crime and recidivism. Details: Pittsburgh: Department of Political Science University of Pittsburgh, 2018. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 4, 2019 at: https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=842027003008098066121126093067006110050040086012039063125105084023101103100089126126100002120123037033111096087127007067113081021011055076033018097071102099003125007028082062115124074098009086090121026031090111080080007101069074112098013086081103089092&EXT=pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=8420270030080980661211260930670061100500400860120390631251050840231011031000891261261000021201230370331110960871270070671130810210110550760330180970711020990031250070280820621151240 Shelf Number: 154468 Keywords: Felon Disenfranchisement Voting Rights |
Author: Sances, Michael W. Title: Who Pays for Government? Descriptive Representation and Exploitative Revenue Sources Summary: We examine U.S. city governments' use of fines and court fees for local revenue, a policy that disproportionately affects black voters, and the connections between this policy and black representation. Using data on over 9,000 cities, we show the use of fines as revenue is common, and is robustly related to the share of city residents who are black. We also find black representation on city councils diminishes the connection between black population and fines revenue. Our findings speak to the potential of descriptive representation to alleviate biases in city policy. Details: Prepublication paper, 2016. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 25, 2019 at: https://hyeyoungyou.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/fines.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://hyeyoungyou.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/fines.pdf Shelf Number: 155555 Keywords: Court Fines Debtors Prison Fines and Fees Racial Disparities Voting 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 restitutionmay 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 |
Author: Patterson, Elizabeth G. Title: Criminal Convictions, Incarceration, and the Right to Vote in South Carolina Summary: In a democratic society characterized by near-universal suffrage, like the twenty-first century United States, stripping a citizen of the right to vote is an extreme measure, requiring the strongest of justifications. It is generally accepted that denial of the vote to minors and mentally incompetent persons is justified because of their impaired capacity for reasoned decision-making. However, no such agreed-upon justification exists for the widespread denial of the vote to citizens who have been convicted of crimes. Indeed, the scope of what is generally referred to as "felon disenfranchisement" varies widely among states, and does not exist at all in two. Because of questions about the rationale for felon disenfranchisement, many jurisdictions have begun to re-examine laws that restrict the voting rights of persons with criminal convictions. In the last twenty years, in particular, a number of states have made legal and administrative changes aimed both at expanding the voting rights of ex-offenders and at assuring that ex-offenders whose voting rights have been restored are not excluded from the franchise by misinformation or unnecessary administrative hurdles. South Carolina, however, has not revisited the issue since the current law was adopted in the early 1980's. That law, in turn, was hurriedly adopted to replace a Jim Crow-era statute that had been challenged on equal protection grounds. Nor has implementation of the current disenfranchisement statute been carefully examined to assure that restoration of voting rights following the period of disenfranchisement is actual and not merely theoretical. As a class project, Professor Elizabeth Patterson's spring 2018 Voting Rights Seminar at the University of South Carolina School of Law undertook a wide-ranging study of law, policy, and practice affecting the voting rights of South Carolinians who have been convicted of crimes, or who are otherwise incarcerated. Based on interviews with state and local officials and other interested persons, examination of state statutes from all 50 states, and review of a wide range of published material, the class identified three issues that should be addressed in order to assure that the voting rights of persons who have been convicted of crimes or are otherwise incarcerated are limited no more than is necessary to serve legitimate policy goals. The three issues, which are discussed more fully in the report that follows, are: 1. The scope of disenfranchisement under current law. Conclusion: The scope of disenfranchisement under current South Carolina law is broader than can be justified by legitimate policy goals, impedes successful re-entry and rehabilitation of ex-offenders, and has an unacceptable disproportionate effect on black voting rights. The state should consider relieving probationers, parolees, and misdemeanants (other than those convicted of election offenses) of the burden of disenfranchisement. 2. Practical and administrative obstacles to ex-offenders' participation in the electorate following restoration of voting rights. Conclusion: Substantial misunderstanding and misinformation concerning ex-offenders' voting rights exist among both ex-offenders themselves and among local election officials. Restoration of voting rights as provided for by South Carolina law will not be a reality without more intensive efforts to inform affected persons of their voting rights and how to exercise the, together with full implementation of the system of guidance and oversight for county boards of voter registration and elections mandated in the 2014 Election Reform Act. 3. Whether the voting rights of eligible voters who are incarcerated are adequately protected. Conclusion: The state has a duty to assure that inmates who retain the right to vote are provided with information and assistance necessary to exercise that right. Details: Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina School of Law, 2018. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 1, 2019 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3369106 Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3369106 Shelf Number: 157084 Keywords: Criminal Convictions Ex-Offenders Felon Disenfranchisement Incarceration Inmates Voting Rights |