How Do You Disenfranchise 1 In 8 Black Men?
Over the last two centuries, other voting prohibitions have fallen one by one as what was originally a privilege enjoyed only by white men of property was grudgingly recognized as a basic American right.
But in many states, convicted felons can't vote even after they've re-entered society. And because of the disproportionate number of black men convicted of felonies, the effect on that population has been tremendously magnified.
An estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote based on their felony convictions, 4 million of whom are out of prison. About a third of them are black, including 13 percent of all African-American men.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are proposing to change that. H.R. 3335, the Democracy Restoration Act, would bar states from disenfranchising felons from federal elections after they've been released from prison. Right now, state laws are literally all over the map.
At a subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, called the matter "a question of rehabilitation, democracy and fairness." He argued, in his prepared remarks:
Felony voting restrictions are the last vestige of voting prohibitions; when the U.S. was founded only wealthy white men were allowed to vote. Women, minorities, illiterates and the poor were excluded. Most of these restrictions have all been eliminated over time, often with much debate, rancor and challenges. People who have served their time and been released from prison are the last Americans to be denied their highly cherished, basic right to vote.
He said the state laws "have significantly affected the political voice of the African American community." For instance:In Virginia, almost 7% of the entire voting-age population is disenfranchised due to a past felony conviction; and almost 20% of the state's African American population is locked out of the voting booth.NYU Law School Professor Burt Neuborne argued that "most felony disenfranchisement statutes have their genesis in an effort to disenfranchise racial minorities" and that the "felony disenfranchisement laws of one kind or another" that "remain on the books of 48 of the 50 states" are "a morally repugnant link with a racist past."
Andres Idarraga, a Yale Law School student, told his story:
I became involved in drug dealing, and, at 20, I was sent to prison as a result. I would spend the next six years and four months incarcerated. While incarcerated, I realized what I had thrown away and became determined to turn things around for myself, for my family, and for my community. After I was released, I attended the University of Rhode Island, graduated from Brown University, and am now attending Yale Law School....
In November 2006, my fellow Rhode Islanders were the first in the nation to go to the
polls and approve a ballot referendum to restore voting rights to people as soon as they are released from prison. Now, when a person leaves prison, the Department of Corrections hands him or her a voter registration form. This change in the law allowed me and 15,000 other citizens with felony convictions to vote. We are now finally fully vested members of our communities, and our civic engagement will leave lasting imprints.Two witnesses spoke in defense of the current system, including Hans von Spakovsky, whose claim to fame is his stint in the Bush Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, where he turned the voting rights section's mission on its head -- working to make it harder, not easier, for poor and minority voters to cast ballots. He argued in his prepared remarks:
The loss of civil rights is part of the sanction that our society has determined should be applied to criminals. Many black communities unfortunately suffer from high rates of crime, yet this bill would have a pernicious effect on the ability of law-abiding citizens to reduce crime in their own communities.Von Spakovsky said it was a matter of states' rights. And he both mocked and questioned the motivations of the bill's sponsors:
Why does this bill not also amend federal law to allow them to once again own a handgun? Are we to believe that they can be trusted to vote but not to own a handgun? Are we to believe that the sponsors of this legislation think that a convicted child molester can be trusted to vote but cannot be trusted to be a teacher in a public school? Are we to believe a convicted drug dealer can be trusted to vote but cannot be trusted to be a police officer? Or is the true motivation here based more on the fact that their vote is important to winning close elections?
Second Class Citizenship: The Impact of Prison on Black America
March 4, 2010 by freemixradio
In light of some recently published studies which further our understanding of the relationship between slavery and prison we offer a re-post of this important study of that system. “The more politicians threaten to stop crime and imprison criminals, the more crime we have. The newspapers never fail to describe a black defendant as such. Seldom if ever is a white defendant so described. Given the prevailing climate of thought, or reaction on the subject, most people will assume one charged with crime is black.
None of this should be read as a defense of black criminals or their crimes. What to do about crime and criminals is the imponderable that confronts both me and the system. It is clear that prisons have not provided a satisfactory answer, nor have learned criminologists. Why have prisons become so disproportionately black and Hispanic in the last few years? Why is their population composed of the poor?” —–Judge Bruce Wright, Black Robes, White Justice: Why our Legal System Doesn’t Work For Blacks
Originally published September 22, 2008
The Implications of the Prison Industrial Complex on Black America – Part I: The ways in which the criminal justice system maintains second class citizenship
By Malik Russell
This 3-part series seeks to examine the ways in which the United States system of criminal justice, policing, prisons and sentencing policy plays a role in reinforcing a permanent underclass existing within the African American community. The Black community is only one of numerous communities negatively impacted by the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), yet it remains the most disparately impacted and destabilized community in relation to the way America addresses its social problems through crime, control and incarceration.
The Prison Industrial Complex, herein referred to as the PIC represents a myriad of intersecting institutions including jails, prisons, the courts, and sentencing that all connect in support of maintaining the socio-economic and political status quo. Simply said, the way in which “crime” is defined, addressed, and discussed is done so in a way that legitimizes current inequalities and conditions that regulate the access and manner in which the African American communities can access the socio-economic and political mainstream of American Society.
Today, over 2.3 million individuals are imprisoned within the United States and over half of them are African Americans who only make up 12% of the general population. In many cases, if this type of disparity were to occur, major human rights groups would issue a declarative statement read before the United Nations regarding the violation of human rights within that nation.
A few activists have traveled that route only to find their pleas continually falling on deaf ears. The impact of the prison system on Black America remains the invisible crisis that wasn’t. It’s only Black people and they commit more crime-right? Then again how do we define “crime,” and which crimes are punishable by prison or by simply paying a fine?
One of the things that the organization Critical Resistance argues is that the prison system/PIC cannot be rehabilitated. That in this sense we should throw out the baby with the bathwater and I agree that the whole way in which we address crime has not worked and that other solutions that actually make our communities safer do exist.
In relation to the Black community the criminal justice system aka the Prison Industrial Complex has not maintained a blind eye, but conveniently kept one eye open as African Americans are penalized more for the same crimes, prosecuted more, given harsher sentences than whites charged with the same crimes, and targeted by police more despite no real evidence that African Americans are more criminal than any other group regardless of the destructive socio-economic environments that low-income communities are forced to live in. Socio-economic conditions may factor in the type of crimes committed not necessarily in the commission of crimes.
African Americans constitute almost 12% of the general population and only 13% of drug users yet 57% of those incarcerated in state prisons from a drug crime. Whites in turn make up nearly 70% of the general population and 68 percent of drug users but only 23% of those locked up in state prisons from drug crimes. In racial profiling studies done in both Texas and New York, highlighting police stops and searches for illegal contraband-whites were more likely to have illegal contraband than African Americans.
We all know the long sick history of mandatory minimum sentences for possessing 5 grams of crack compared to 500 grams of cocaine. What is relatively un-discussed is the fact that 97 percent of all federal crack offenders prosecuted between 1992-4 were racial minorities or the fact that not one-not one white person was prosecuted by federal� authorities in Los Angeles from 1988-1994.
From targeting to apprehension to processing to sentencing Blacks suffer more at the hands of the criminal justice system in a way that is so disparate it can be looked at in no other way than as policy. According to a study by Building Blocks for Youth, a Black Youth with no record of incarceration charged with a drug offence is still 48 times more likely than a White youth of the same background to be sent to juvenile prison. If the White youth is sentenced, he is normally given a shorter sentence.
It would be enough to address the current disparities within the criminal justice system which only mirror other aspects of American society. Still that would be a job within itself. Unfortunately, these series of articles are not simply to challenge current inequities within the system and its ongoing racial bias. The purpose of these articles is to change the whole perspective of the reader regarding how we view crime and punishment and to look at the creation of an alternative way of addressing “crime” that has at its roots justice, rehabilitation, and reciprocity.
The current prison industrial complex as it stands represents an extension of the status quo whereas the top 5% of the wealthy control the majority of wealth in the nation. It’s the trickle down theory of politics, where we determine who gets what, how much and who gets none. An extension of the belief or policy that says its okay for thousands of young Black or Latinos to murder each other annually, okay for unemployment rates in the Hood to be closer to the age of young men unable to find employment than the unemployment rate in white communities. This is a policy that says its okay for the violence, unemployment, faulty education, lack of opportunities, and no healthcare to exist in these Black and poor communities-were okay with that. We won’t invest in front end opportunities but we will spend billions annually to incarcerate these young men and women-no to books and education but yes to bars and incarceration is the likely motto.
From the time Africans were first brought to these shores, the police state and criminal justice systems was a means to control them and served as an extension of the ruling class to maintain the status quo. This is the history of the prison industrial complex and not much has changed.
The Black community continues to be in a war with the prison industrial complex and the way it remains structured as an extension of social policy. This war began shortly after the ending another war which unintentionally gave a momentary lapse of first class citizenship to blacks-the Civil War. Shortly after Blacks gained measures of equality, foes to our progress began to utilize the criminal justice system as a means deny as oppose providing justice.
Part II: From Plantations to Projects to the Penitentiary