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Why felons should be allowed to vote
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People who are convicted of felonies lose their rights to vote and other public rights, while corporation are convicted of felonies and they never lose their political right (Barak, 101). The criminal justice system is out to control the people, especially the people of color and in poverty. Money talks and the rich people are always getting away “murder”, while the poor are just be collected and thrown into cage to rot. The media always shows what they want to keep people controlled, they are another source of keeping fearing the people.
The feelings of allowing felons to vote is chilling; those who have been to prison have committed crimes and are out to get their rights back. But it is clear that felons should be “disenfranchised because they have broken the laws,” says Edward Feser, a philosophy professor and writer. Yet people are still questioning whether it is moral to keep felons from getting the rights to vote. Disenfranchising felons is unintentional in racial issues, and is used to punish felons to teach them that once they've broken the laws, they have lost their voting rights as well, and it would also keep felons from violating fellow citizens' voting rights.
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
In the United States 2.2 million citizens are incarcerated on felony charges. Laws in America prohibit felons from voting. As a result, on Election Day 5.3 million citizens of America are disenfranchised because of crimes they once committed. Though they once broke the law, they have served their time and have been punished adequately in accordance with the American Justice System. Felons should regain full voting rights after their stint in prison.
The United States is one of the only few democratic countries that disenfranchises convicted felons. An estimated 5.85 million people charged with a felony are banned from voting. Moreover, felon disenfranchisement laws are a form of racial discrimination because a large percentage of felons are Hispanic, Latino or African American that have been incarcerated as a result of racial profiling. Denying felons from voting is unconstitutional since the right to vote and cast a ballot is supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy. Felons who have completed their sentence should be restored their right to vote as they should be able to participate in elections just like every other citizen. Despite being charged with a felony, felons are also American
Individuals convicted of a felony should not lose their right to vote. The right to vote is a
Saint Augustine once said, “In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?” The criminal justice system in America has been documented time and time again as being a legal system that borders on the surreal. We as Americans live in a country where the Justice Department has failed to collect on $7 billion in fines and restitutions from thirty-seven thousand corporations and individuals convicted of white collar crime. That same Justice Department while instead spending more than 350% since 1980 on total incarceration expenditures totaling $80 billion dollars. America has become a place where a 71-year-old man will get 150 years in prison for stealing $68 billion dollars from nearly everyone in the country and a five-time petty offender in Dallas was sentenced to one thousand years in prison for stealing $73.
The whole idea of taking away a convicted felon’s voting rights started in Rome when they were the controlling empire. Nowadays, a majority of prisons throughout the United States are allowing felons to vote on who becomes the next president. Even though they have committed murder, rape, thievery, we blow off those thoughts and allow felons to have a say in who runs this beautiful country. So the question is, should we allow convicted felons to vote? Not a chance would I ever say yes into letting felons choose our next president! Would you want to stand next to a convicted felon as you vote? I have a hard time imagining this act.
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
The basis of criminal justice in the United States is one founded on both the rights of the individual and the democratic order of the people. Evinced through the myriad forms whereby liberty and equity marry into the mores of society to form the ethos of a people. However, these two systems of justice are rife with conflicts too. With the challenges of determining prevailing worth in public order and individual rights coming down to the best service of justice for society. Bearing a perpetual eye to their manifestations by the truth of how "the trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both" (Hitchens, 2003, para. 5).
In the wake of President Obama’s election, the United States seems to be progressing towards a post-racial society. However, the rates of mass incarceration of black males in America deem this to be otherwise. Understanding mass incarceration as a modern racial caste system will reveal the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy America. The history of social control in the United States dates back to the first racial caste systems: slavery and the Jim Crow Laws. Although these caste systems were outlawed by the 13th amendment and Civil Rights Act respectively, they are given new life and tailored to the needs of the time.In other words, racial caste in America has not ended but has merely been redesigned in the shape of mass incarceration. Once again, the fact that more than half of the young black men in many large American cities are under the control of the criminal justice system show evidence of a new racial caste system at work. The structure of the criminal justice system brings a disproportionate number of young black males into prisons, relegating them to a permanent second-class status, and ensuring there chances of freedom are slim. Even when minorities are released from prisons, they are discriminated against and most usually end up back in prisons . The role of race in criminal justice system is set up to discriminate, arrest, and imprison a mass number of minority men. From stopping, searching, and arresting, to plea bargaining and sentencing it is apparent that in every phases of the criminal justice system race plays a huge factor. Race and structure of Criminal Justice System, also, inhibit the integration of ex offenders into society and instead of freedom, relea...
Opponents to mass incarceration like Michelle Alexander have called it the “New Jim Crow”, a social institution aimed at limiting the rights of African Americans. Upon their release criminals are legally denied the right to vote, excluded from juries, and placed in a position of subordination. Others would suggest that, “cultural shifts, political realignments, changes in job prospects for low-skilled men, and perhaps most importantly, legal changes” have led to the severe increase and absolute disparity in the rates of black imprisonment over the late 20th and early 21st centuries. One thing is certain, mass incarceration would be justifiable if crime decreased but that is just not the case. Evidence has shown that the benefits of mass imprisonment in reducing crime have diminished over time and incarceration is now a much less effective method for crime control than it was before the 1990s. Due to factual evidence of high rates racial disparity in imprisonment, mass incarceration can be seen as a significant generator of social inequality. The history and the study of mass incarceration is important because it defines us as a society just like slavery and Jim Crow once
The rise of mass incarceration further eroded civil rights progress by destabilizing urban communities. The “war on drugs” ensnared countless African Americans in the criminal justice system at significantly higher rates than whites, at a time when drug crimes as a whole were declining. Felon disfranchisement laws and, in some states, the use of gerrymandering techniques that treat prisoners as residents of the prison’s jurisdiction, rather than as residents of their home communities, continue to undermine African Americans’ political power and
More specifically, one’s constitutional right to a fair trial is simply unavailable to certain individuals. “The adversarial system doesn’t work as it should when disadvantaged and unsophisticated individuals are forced to stand alone in defending their property against superior governmental resources.” You cannot do anything in that situation, except shake your head and go to prison. In our present-day America there is going to be somebody higher up, that is profiting from the incarceration of inmates. It seems oddly coincidental that it would be made as unfair as possible for drug offenders, when the final verdict is
In both of these scenarios, justice was not done. The systems responsibility is to promote justice, equality, fairness, and protection. However, wrongful convictions have broken this trust and confidence between the system and the people. People look up to the criminal justice system but when that trust is broken; the system also crumbles. Wrongful convictions do not just harm the innocent alleged criminal. The harm is also brought upon the innocent individuals family, the guilty person was allowed to go free and, potentially, commit further crimes, the victim’s family, and the system itself.
Not every offender is the same. Some may have similar tactics and motives but everyone comes from a different background and environment. A lot of people believe that many individuals offend for money or revenge. These are true to an extent. Many offenders do have other thoughts and situations in mind when committing offenses but retaliation seems to be a common factor in why they break the law.