Felon Disenfranchisement

[Belsnickel]

(04-24-2018, 10:36 PM)Dill Wrote: Like what you are doing here, and your recognition that racially discriminatory laws in the U.S. must be crafted to EXCLUDE reference to race. Hence the increasing use of demographic data to determine which groups laws most likely impact.

Have you checked out the Sentencing Project?

I have a question for you, beyond race, how do you account for the punitive impulse--the desire to keep a kind of scarlet letter on offenders permanently?  Anyone in your research address or speculate about that?  I am guessing it has a religious character.

Another question--in my post above I mentioned Florida's problem with selective re-enfranchisement. Have you looked into that at all?  While technically Florida is a total "civil death" state, it has for over a decade allowed felons to re-apply for voting rights.  The program was looking good until the present governor.

So, my parameters for this were tight, and I can't get too much longer. Otherwise there would be a couple more pages worth. I am already one page over the assignment. I would've liked to dig in more to the different selective re-enfranchisement situations instead of just glossing over them by mentioning the bureaucratic maze in some states (which may or may not be in this draft, I've done two more since this one).

The punitive impulse goes back to ancient civilizations. The concept of civil death is one that has existed since at least Rome to separate a criminal from society. It continued on for centuries as people wished to exclude people from positions in society who were less than desirable. The impulse there is clear, that certain people should not be included. However, if we live in a fair and democratic society, we shouldn't follow that impulse. If someone has already served out their punishment, then we should allow them to reintegrate. That is what should distinguish us, as a democratic society, from those that have come before.

As to The Sentencing Project, any mention of the Uggen source is a document from them.