While reading of the exchange between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney on voting rights for felons last week, it occurred to me that in the 20-plus years since I started going into prisons as a volunteer, none of the men on the inside has told me what he misses about the free world is voting.
The men—I’ve only worked with men—tell me that they miss their mothers (although, poignantly, very few mention missing their fathers), they miss their wives, children, and jobs. Several have even mentioned missing Dr. Pepper. But none has mentioned to me that he misses the voting booth.
Over the same time period, I’ve heard numerous scholarly presentations and political discussions on the same topic. While I do not pretend that the men I associate with on the inside constitute a representative sample of the prison population, I have a suspicion that voting rights for felons is a bigger issue to folks on the outside than it is to the men on the inside.
I understand the reasons for opposing votes for felons. Almost all of the men on the inside have hurt people, either directly through violent offenses or indirectly through drug and alcohol offenses. In Lockean political theory, a person forfeits the privileges of civil society through violent aggression. Deprivation of the vote is one appropriate indicia of this forfeiture.
So I don’t believe it’s an illegitimate consequence for most offenders to face for their actions. But the absence of illegitimacy doesn’t answer the question: Is deprivation of the vote subsequent to release (and after any probation and parole) a useful additional penalty for society to impose on offenders?
Without minimizing or rationalizing the impact that crime has on victims and society at large—which is a tendency that is important to avoid both for the spiritual growth of the men as well as for the volunteer who receives Jesus in ministering to these men (Mt 25.36)—it seems to me that there are practical reasons that offenders who have completed their sentences should be welcomed back into civil society by being re-granted the suffrage.
The recidivism rate for released offenders remains very high. Even for men actively involved in the church on the inside, the transition from prison to the free world is fraught with difficulty, and many do not succeed.
While there are certainly those men in prison who play the church game, it’s not true of all of the men. And in some ways, the transition to the free world for Christians seems to me even more difficult than for those who aren’t.
Men who have converted or returned to the faith on the inside and who “walk the talk” often find a warm, supportive community of faith inside prison walls. Many are respected—by the other offenders as well as by guards and staff—and many even hold positions of leadership and responsibility in their prison churches.
When released, even the strongest Christians typically face suspicion and fear from their families, from society at large, and from churches on the outside. These are not entirely unjustified reactions from people who knew the offender before prison but who have no closely participated in their transformation.
Nonetheless, at the precise moment these men need support to succeed in the free world, they lose the social and spiritual support they knew inside the walls, and they often find no alternative welcome on the outside (except perhaps from their old friends).
Without this support, and faced with the personal upheaval of release into a free world that can be significantly different than the one they understood before then went in, it’s not a surprise that the men find themselves tempted to revert to the only behavior they have experience with in the free world, even though it’s behavior that lead to their incarceration in the first place.
I don’t pretend that returning the vote to these men will change all of that. But I see no gain to us by piling on after their release. It’s a difficult enough transition without the continuing reminder that even after you’ve served your sentence, you’re not really welcomed back into civil society. And it’s in our interest—society’s interest—to help ex-offenders successfully transition back into the free world.
James R. Rogers is associate professor and department head in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University.
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Comments:
Rather, deprivation of the right to vote may be a "win/win" proposition - society's interest in having voters who subscribe to some minimal level of responsible behavior is acknowledged, while the felon's interest in rehabilitation (if it exists) is not materially impeded. A just and appropriate middle ground may be a method of regaining the right to vote based on some demonstration of rehabilitation, such as holding a job for a period of years, paying taxes, paying child support, or obtaining an education.
Felapton argues that the right of every citizen to vote must be absolute and inviolate: "if it is permissible to deprive any citizen of the right to vote, every citizen's right is less secure." But this is true of incarceration, taxes, and all sorts of other unpleasantness we routinely inflict, for many good reasons. Certainly one's right to liberty, and the right to retain the fruits of one's honest labor, are important. Why these rights are "violate" and the right to vote "inviolate" is not self-evident.
Nor do I think it is self-evident that "laws cannot promote the public good when they are made by only a subset of the population." In our republic laws are always made by a minuscule subset of people voted into office by the dismayingly small subset of the population that actually chooses to exercise its right to vote. Any number of laws promoting the public good have come from this process.
I cannot think of what "unique" interests convicts (qua convicts) would have in the legislative process. Nor do I think that such "unique" interests, if identified, would be a powerful argument for universal convict suffrage. I would certainly be willing to ruminate on an example, if one were offered. As for the law becoming distorted in unanticipated ways, that is (sadly) true all the time, in every political system devised by man. It would be so if we permitted every human on earth, from the age of 3-years up, to vote in American elections. I have a hunch that the "distortions" that might arise from denying convicts the right to vote would be perceived as quite healthy.
Taking away the vote, as you pointed out, succinctly does. Maybe a way of addressing both the concern of who we think they are and the gist of your essay is to provide a path to citizenship or re citizenship. If it matters to them in both the exact sense and the larger sense we could give them the right back after say 5 years of good behavior with some intermediate steps in which we and they could measure their progress. If they choose to not take the oppurtunity at least it will have been offered.
All such laws should be immediately abolished as just another relic of our former apartheid regime. The nice moral analysis of the first three comments, pinkies arched just so over their moral teacups, because it ignores this reality, is utterly worthless.
Non-convicts are too often willing to spare themselves knowledge of the gruesome realities that pertain to these issues.
The right to liberty is not inviolate because public safety is essential. The right to retain the fruits of one's labor is not inviolate because public safety and public health are essential and also because small judicious expenditures of public funds can vastly increase the fruits of everybody's labor. These are limitations to rights which an overwhelming majority of citizens agree to and support. No such considerations are relevant to the right to vote.
Similarly, there is a procedure, whereby an offender can subsequently apply, on cause shown, for reduction of the term.
This, I would submit, strikes the right balance between the rights of the individual and those of the nation.
But to argue that "no such considerations are relevant to the right to vote" is wrong, unless one is willing to assert that all voter qualification rules are unjust. Voter qualification rules are founded on the assumption that some requirement of investment in the system is just and prudent. I take it there is no quibble with disqualifying non-citizens, or children aged 10, from voting. But if you agree that a disqualification based on a non-volitional condition is legitimate, how can you argue that a felony - a deliberate expression of selfishness that subverts the general welfare and is in direct opposition to the concept of a rule of law - cannot disqualify an individual from voting?
Put in another light, is it unjust or imprudent to deny a convict the right to hold office? If not, then how can it be qualitatively different to deny the convict the right to vote, which is no more than the right to rule through designated proxies?
I cannot agree that the right to vote must be inalienable. I think a better answer is that a convict should be given a sensible path to earn back his right to vote.
It is not an accident that the states with the most restrictions on the right of a felon who has done his time to vote are those of the Old Confederacy. It is simply another tool for suppressing the aggregate vote of black people.
All such laws should be immediately abolished as just another relic of our former apartheid regime. The nice moral analysis of the first three comments, pinkies arched just so over their moral teacups, because it ignores this reality, is utterly worthless.
