Felony disenfranchisement.” Those two words have been bandied about lately, but what exactly do they mean? The Sentencing Project tells us in a new publication, Felony Disenfranchisement: An Annotated Bibliography, a compilation of 80 articles and books that have been written about the subject during the past two decades.
The Sentencing Project promises that felony disenfranchisement will be examined from many different perspectives including “law, social science, history, and journalism.”
As elections loom near, the topic of felony disenfranchisement becomes even more important. A movement to give the right to vote back to Americans who are incarcerated, on probation, on parole or even released from prison has been gaining momentum. There are racial implications in denying someone with a felony the right to vote. The racial disparity of America’s criminal justice system is a national shame, claim those seeking reform.
But there is also an economic component to denying the right to vote to someone with a felony. Low income individuals charged with a crime often cannot afford proper counsel and will plead out to a charge, not realizing that a felony conviction will strip them of the right to vote, as well as other rights.
In the not too distant past courageous men and women fought, and died, for the right to vote. Voting rights was a cornerstone of the civil rights movement. Yet the collateral consequences of a felony conviction seemingly washes away the blood of the martyrs. The Sentencing Project’s Annotated Bibliography brings together a wide selection of information on the past, present and future of felony disenfranchisement in a country that prides itself on giving voice to its people, but in reality, silences five million of them.
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