Download or read book Felony Disenfranchisement in America written by Katherine Irene Pettus and published by LFB Scholarly Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pettus traces felony disenfranchisement from Athenian democracy to the present. She analyzes the contradiction between present state disenfranchisement practices and voting rights jurisprudence and concludes that American citizens lack equal voting rights: the right to vote for national representatives is trumped by state laws that define felonies and the criteria for disenfranchisement. The majority of the disenfranchised today are African-American, and most felony convictions are drug-related. Nonetheless, drug use and trafficking are equally distributed across demographic groups. The current variation in state laws disenfranchising felons, the lack of standard definitions of felonies, and the racial disparities within the criminal justice system reproduce many of the inequalities of the colonial America, despite the development of federal citizenship and voting rights law since the end of the Civil War.
Download or read book Criminal Disenfranchisement in an International Perspective written by Alec C. Ewald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book analyzes a contemporary policy question at the nexus of democracy, criminal justice, and constitutional citizenship.
Download or read book Punishment and Citizenship written by Milena Tripkovic and published by Studies in Penal Theory and Ph. This book was released on 2018-12-24 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criminal disenfranchisement-the practice of restricting electoral rights following criminal conviction-is the only surviving electoral restriction of adult, mentally competent citizens in contemporary democracies. Despite the strong devotion to the principle of universal suffrage, criminal offenders are still routinely deprived of active and passive franchise, while the justifications for such limitations remain elusive and incoherent. In Punishment and Citizenship, Milena Tripkovic develops an empirical and normative account of criminal disenfranchisement. Starting from historical precedents of such restrictions and examining the current policies of a number of European countries, Tripkovic argues that while criminal disenfranchisement is considered a form of punishment, it should instead be viewed as a citizenship sanction imposed when a citizen fails to perform their role as a member of a political community. In order to determine the justifications of disenfranchisement, Tripkovic explores various citizenship ideals and examines whether criminal offenders comply with the expectations that are posed before them. After developing a theoretical framework of citizenship duties, Tripkovic concludes that very few criminal offenders fail to satisfy fundamental citizenship conditions and exhaustive voting restrictions cannot ultimately be justified. A comprehensive assessment of criminal disenfranchisement, Punishment and Citizenship offers concrete policy suggestions to determine the limited circumstances under which electoral rights could justifiably be withheld from criminal offenders.
Download or read book The Disenfranchisement of Ex Felons written by Elizabeth Hull and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking look at one population's loss of voting rights in the United States.
Download or read book Locked Out written by Jeff Manza and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mr. Manza and Mr. Uggen... wade into one of the most contested empirical debates in political science: How many (if any) recent American elections would have gone differently if all former felons had been allowed to vote?"--The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, who understand the vastness of the jailers' reach, follow the story out of the cell and into the voting booth. Locked Out examines how the disenfranchisement of felons shapes American democracyhardly a hypothetical matter in an age of split electorates and hanging chads.... Exacting and fair, their work should persuade even those who come to the subject skeptically that an injustice is at hand.The New York Review of Books. 5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adultsare denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--for election outcomes, for the reintegration of former offenders back into their communities, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.
Download or read book Living in Infamy written by Pippa Holloway and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living in Infamy uncovers the origins of felon disfranchisement and traces the expansion of the practice to felons regardless of race and its spread beyond the South, establishing a system that affects the American electoral process today.
Download or read book Felony Disenfranchisement in America written by Katherine Irene Pettus and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State felony disenfranchisement laws that date back to Reconstruction fracture the American electorate into those who are citizens in the fullest sense of the term, in Aristotles words, and those who, deprived of political voice, still have the status of slaves. The existence of this "invisible constituency"approximately 5.8 million or 2.5% of the national voting populationwho live alongside the ruling enfranchised electorateis one of the scandals of our generation. In this second edition of Felony Disenfranchisement in America, Katherine Irene Pettus draws on philosophy, history, law, and punishment theory to make the compelling argument that state disenfranchisement policies have collective moral and political significance that transcends the personal tragedy of being legally deprived of full citizenship status. Pettus argues that the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and racially unbalanced disenfranchisement rates distort and disfigure the body politic as a whole, and undermine the legitimacy of the domestic and foreign policies promulgated by our elected representatives.
Download or read book Regaining the Vote written by Patricia E. Allard and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two reports on the issue of felony disenfranchisement. The 1st report provides an update on the legal, legislative, and community initiatives undertaken to restore or preserve felons1 and ex-felons1 voting rights, as well as those initiatives that seek to limit or ban voting rights. Also examines the often confusing and cumbersome restoration procedures in several states. The 2nd report, 3Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the U.S.,2 includes the first 50-state survey of the impact of U.S. criminal disenfranchisement laws. No other democratic country in the world denies as many people -- in absolute or proportional terms -- the right to vote because of felony convictions.
Download or read book Punishment and Inclusion written by Andrew Dilts and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the start of the twenty-first century, 1 percent of the U.S. population is behind bars. An additional 3 percent is on parole or probation. In all but two states, incarcerated felons cannot vote, and in three states felon disenfranchisement is for life. More than 5 million adult Americans cannot vote because of a felony-class criminal conviction, meaning that more than 2 percent of otherwise eligible voters are stripped of their political rights. Nationally, fully a third of the disenfranchised are African American, effectively disenfranchising 8 percent of all African Americans in the United States. In Alabama, Kentucky, and Florida, one in every five adult African Americans cannot vote. Punishment and Inclusion gives a theoretical and historical account of this pernicious practice of felon disenfranchisement, drawing widely on early modern political philosophy, continental and postcolonial political thought, critical race theory, feminist philosophy, disability theory, critical legal studies, and archival research into state constitutional conventions. It demonstrates that the history of felon disenfranchisement, rooted in postslavery restrictions on suffrage and the contemporaneous emergence of the modern “American” penal system, reveals the deep connections between two political institutions often thought to be separate, showing the work of membership done by the criminal punishment system and the work of punishment done by the electoral franchise. Felon disenfranchisement is a symptom of the tension that persists in democratic politics between membership and punishment. This book shows how this tension is managed via the persistence of white supremacy in contemporary regimes of punishment and governance.
Download or read book Regaining the Vote written by Patricia E. Allard and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Uncounted written by Gilda R. Daniels and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An answer to the assault on voting rights—crucial reading in light of the 2024 presidential election The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is considered one of the most effective pieces of legislation the United States has ever passed. It enfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly in the American South, and drew attention to the problem of voter suppression. Yet in recent years there has been a continuous assault on access to the ballot box in the form of stricter voter ID requirements, meritless claims of rigged elections, and baseless accusations of voter fraud. In the past these efforts were aimed at eliminating African American voters from the rolls, and today, new laws seek to eliminate voters of color, the poor, and the elderly, groups that historically vote for the Democratic Party. Uncounted examines the phenomenon of disenfranchisement through the lens of history, race, law, and the democratic process. Gilda R. Daniels, who served as Deputy Chief in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and has more than two decades of voting rights experience, argues that voter suppression works in cycles, constantly adapting and finding new ways to hinder access for an exponentially growing minority population. She warns that a premeditated strategy of restrictive laws and deceptive practices has taken root and is eroding the very basis of American democracy—the right to vote!
Download or read book African American Felon Disenfranchisement written by John E. Pinkard and published by Lfb Scholarly Pub Llc. This book was released on 2013 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilizing a field study on felons that were within one year of completing incarceration, Pinkard analyzes the legal history, constitutionality, conflicting laws, political, and life chance consequences of felon disenfranchisement laws on African American felons and the African American community. Research and data presented in this book indicate that: felon disenfranchisement is based on moralistic beliefs, modern racism, and stereotypes about human differences and that permanent political marginalization of a particular segment of American society not only negates democracy in principle by diluting voter participation and equal representation but also assures the debasement of specific segments of society and the life chances of African Americans in particular.
Download or read book America s Disenfranchised written by Desmond Meade and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lawrence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. Voting is foundational in a democracy, yet over six million American citizens remain stripped of their ability to participate in elections. Once convicted of a felony, people who complete their sentences reenter society, but no longer with the civil rights they once had. They may return to school, secure employment to provide for their families, and become law-abiding, tax-paying citizens—sometimes for decades—and still be denied the voting rights afforded to every other citizen. Desmond Meade, director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and a returning citizen himself, played an instrumental role in the landslide 2018 Amendment 4 victory in Florida, which used the ballot box to restore voting rights to 1.4 million Floridians with a previous felony conviction. Meade argues how, state by state, America can do better. His efforts in Florida present a compelling argument that creating access to democracy for those living on the fringes of society will create a more vibrant and robust democracy for all. He is the winner of the 2021 Brown Democracy Medal for his continuing work to restore voting rights and connect Americans along shared social values.
Download or read book Losing the Vote written by Jamie Fellner and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I. OVERVIEW AND SUMMARY
Download or read book Democracy and Disenfranchisement written by Claudio López-Guerra and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The denial of voting rights to certain types of persons continues to be a moral problem of practical significance. The disenfranchisement of persons with mental impairments, minors, noncitizen residents, nonresident citizens, and criminal offenders is a matter of controversy in many countries. How should we think morally about electoral exclusions? What should we conclude about these particular cases? This book proposes a set of principles, called the Critical Suffrage Doctrine, that defies conventional beliefs on the legitimate denial of the franchise. According to the Critical Suffrage Doctrine, in some realistic circumstances it is morally acceptable to adopt an alternative to universal suffrage that would exclude the vast majority of sane adults for being largely uninformed. Thus, contrary to what most people believe, current controversies on the franchise are not about exploring the limits of a basic moral right. Regarding such controversies, the Critical Suffrage Doctrine establishes that, in polities with universal suffrage, the blanket disenfranchisement of minors and the mentally impaired cannot be justified; that noncitizen residents should be allowed to vote; that excluding nonresident citizens is permissible; and that criminal offenders should not be disenfranchised-although facilitating voting from prison is not required in all contexts. Political theorists have rarely submitted the franchise to serious scrutiny. Hence this study makes a contribution to a largely neglected and important subject.
Download or read book The Voting Rights Act of 1965 written by United States Commission on Civil Rights and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Arresting Citizenship written by Amy E. Lerman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The numbers are staggering: One-third of America’s adult population has passed through the criminal justice system and now has a criminal record. Many more were never convicted, but are nonetheless subject to surveillance by the state. Never before has the American government maintained so vast a network of institutions dedicated solely to the control and confinement of its citizens. A provocative assessment of the contemporary carceral state for American democracy, Arresting Citizenship argues that the broad reach of the criminal justice system has fundamentally recast the relation between citizen and state, resulting in a sizable—and growing—group of second-class citizens. From police stops to court cases and incarceration, at each stage of the criminal justice system individuals belonging to this disempowered group come to experience a state-within-a-state that reflects few of the country’s core democratic values. Through scores of interviews, along with analyses of survey data, Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver show how this contact with police, courts, and prisons decreases faith in the capacity of American political institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns and diminishes the sense of full and equal citizenship—even for those who have not been found guilty of any crime. The effects of this increasingly frequent contact with the criminal justice system are wide-ranging—and pernicious—and Lerman and Weaver go on to offer concrete proposals for reforms to reincorporate this large group of citizens as active participants in American civic and political life.
