The always excellent Jason DeParle has a wide-ranging piece in The New York Review about prisons today. DeParle writes, among other things, about how imprisonment increases and at the same time hides inequality, as well as about the astonishing increase in imprisonment rates in the US (now "five times the historic norm and seven times higher than most of Western Europe"). He also digs into the issue of felon disenfranchisement, which has rightly been drawing an increased amount of attention over the last few years:
"Disenfranchised felon" is a term that encompasses three groups. Some 27 percent are still behind bars. Others, 34 percent, are on probation or parole. And the largest share, 39 percent, are what the authors call "ex-felons," whose sentences have been served. Voters are least receptive to letting the first group vote and most receptive to the last. But state practice varies greatly. Maine and Vermont offer ballots to those still behind bars; thirteen states strip the franchise not only from current prisoners but also from probationers, parolees, and some or all ex-felons.
I tend to think that Maine and Vermont have got it right, but it's that last bit that never ceases to amaze me -- that, in four states today, if you're a convicted felon, you can lose the right to vote forever. You can no longer participate in American democracy -- one of the hallmarks of which, since this country's inception, has been the gradual expansion of the suffrage. Never mind that most depressing of facts, known all too well, I'm sure, to many of this blog's readers: "If felons were allowed to vote, the United States would have a different president." Florida is one of the states that bars ex-felons from voting, and one of the studies discussed in DeParle's review shows that, even using conservative assumptions, the state would've gone to Gore if its felon disenfranchisement regime wasn't among the most restrictive in the country.
DeParle notes that few people today actually argue in favor of felon disenfranchisement, but, not surprisingly, one of them is the hacktacular Republican minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who, in 2002, had this foolishness to offer:
States have a significant interest in reserving the vote for those who have abided by the social contract that forms the foundation of a representative democracy. We are talking about rapists, murderers, robbers, and even terrorists and spies. Do we want to see convicted terrorists who seek to destroy this country voting in elections? Do we want to see "jailhouse blocs" banding together to oust sheriffs and government officials who are tough on crime?
Well, it turns out those rapists, murderers, and robbers "account for about 8 percent of felonies, while drug crimes account for a third." DeParle, being too kind to the stupidity of McConnell's argument about "terrorists and spies," doesn't estimate how many of those people actually reside in US prisons. But how many "jailhouse blocs" do you suppose have ever existed? You're thinking to yourself, "That just sounds like nonsense. A hundred? Perhaps a dozen? Can't be significant." Turns out it's ... zero.
Lest you think McConnell may just be misinformed, consider this little factoid, uncovered by one of the books under review: Absent felon disenfranchisement laws, Mitch McConnell wouldn't have won his election to the Senate in 1984. Ditto for six other modern Republican senators. Now, you don't suppose there's a connection between McConnell's transparently silly arguments and his party's political interests, do you?