Should-felons-lose-the-right-to-vote:
Intergenerational poverty is Richard's status quo, neither good nor bad. Growing up in the land of MLK, it's all he's ever known. The same goes for just about everyone else he encountered growing up in the hood. "That's how Montgomery people is," he says with a shrug, trading his pawn for position.
A generation after the Montgomery bus boycotts purged the city and state of legal segregation, Richard was still riding de facto segregated buses and attending de facto segregated schools right through to senior year—schools where the best imaginable outcome for a youth of his complexion (dreams of NFL greatness aside) was to land a steady job in the trades.
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"Our people," in this case, refers to the quarter-million Alabamans—and millions of other impoverished people across the United States—who have lost their citizenship status because of felony convictions. Most are nonviolent offenders and some will never set foot in prison or jail. Nevertheless, their ability to influence the laws under which they live is severely restricted from the moment they are found guilty of an offense, leaving them effectively powerless to change the socio-political conditions under which most of them live.
Although the Constitution is silent on whether people convicted of felonies should have their rights curtailed, most American states have chosen to restrict the franchise in modern times. Nearly 6 million people in 48 states—2.5 percent of the adult population—are currently ineligible to vote because of a prior conviction.
In the four most restrictive states—Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia—all citizens who are convicted of a felony permanently forfeit the right to vote, regardless of the offense. Ten states even disenfranchise citizens convicted of misdemeanors while they are serving time.
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There are 2.4 million Americans currently serving time behind bars in local, state, and federal institutions—one fourth of the total prison population worldwide and seven times more than in 1972.
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Felon disenfranchisement is not randomly distributed across the population. The large majority of past and present felons who have lost the right to vote were raised and continue to live in poverty.
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In racial terms, the disparities are greater still. African Americans constitute around 38 percent of disenfranchised people—five times the rate among non-blacks—because of significantly higher rates of searching, sentencing, and detention by the police. More than one in seven black men is officially disenfranchised nationwide, with rates climbing as high as one in three in certain states. Some scholars assign the racial disparity in felon disenfranchisement to higher rates of criminal involvement among black men—a contested claim—while most agree that there is longstanding institutional bias within the criminal-justice system. Whatever the cause, the consequences for second-class citizens of color caught up in the criminal-justice system are severe.
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As Richard further attests, the burden of felon disenfranchisement does not stop at voting for poor and minority citizens. Even after they have finished serving their sentence, former felons in Alabama and many other states are barred from serving on juries and denied access to essential government services, like food stamps, public housing, unemployment insurance, and welfare.
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The result is a permanent "second-class" status—what legal scholar Michelle Alexander terms the "American under-caste"—for current and former felons, irrespective of the nonviolent nature of most offenses.
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"Don't let the police think you're homeless—they'll pick you up fast." Momma Donna agrees, adding that panhandling is against the law in these parts. She goes on to detail a pair of instances where homeless people she knew got locked up for weeks on end—"for no good reason"—while they awaited trial. "Once you're in, it can be real, real hard getting out," she explains. Shaken, I thank them for the warning and bid the pair goodnight.
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Maurice, another homeless man in his fifties whom I interview the following morning, adds a story about panhandling of his own. He says he recently made the mistake of asking a Montgomery policeman for change in front of the store—"to put some gas in my car"—and was arrested on the spot for panhandling. "You know what the policeman did?" he asks, still incredulous. "He took me to jail! Locked me in jail for 21 days for asking for 50 cent!"
90% of all criminal cases in USA never see a day in court. They are all settled by plea bargain. That is 90% of the 2.4 million prisoners in US settled for out of court settlement in favor of the state.
So much rule of law in the land of free and the brave.
Oh add in chain gang workers from prison and you can well see slavery never really went away from USA at all. It is only disguised under politically correct terms now. Once a slaver, always a slaver.
