Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:54:04.387Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Punishment and Democracy: Disenfranchisement of Nonincarcerated Felons in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2004

Jeff Manza  and
Christopher Uggen
Jeff Manza
Affiliation:
Jeff Manza is associate professor of sociology and political science, and associate director of the Institute for Policy Research, at Northwestern University ([email protected])
Christopher Uggen
Affiliation:
Christopher Uggen is associate professor of sociology, Life Course Center affiliate, and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota ([email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As levels of criminal punishment have risen in the United States, more and more citizens have been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. This paper provides an overview and analysis of the unique practice of felon disenfranchisement in the United States today. We focus in particular on the political impact of disenfranchising large numbers of nonincarcerated felons—those who have served their entire sentences and those living in their home communities while completing a term of probation or parole. Our discussion is organized around three key issues relating to felon disenfranchisement: (1) the historical and legal origins of this practice; (2) its practical political impact on recent elections; and, (3) the racial dynamics that color both the history and contemporary effects of felon disenfranchisement in the United States. We discuss how felon disenfranchisement laws in many states appear to be out of step with both international practices and public opinion in the United States and consider contemporary policy proposals.Jeff Manza is the coauthor, with Clem Brooks, of Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions. With Jeff Manza, Christopher Uggen is coauthor of the forthcoming Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. Research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (No. 9819015) and from the Individual Project Fellowship Program of the Open Society Institute. The authors are indebted to the editors and anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments and suggestions and to Angela Behrens and Sara Wakefield for research assistance.

Type
SYMPOSIUM
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , September 2004 , pp. 491 - 505
Copyright
© 2004 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Afroyim v. Rusk. 387 U.S. 253 (1967).
Arthur, Lisa, Geoff Dougherty, and William Yardley. 2002. 452 felons cast votes illegally in Broward. Miami Herald, January 23. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/.Google Scholar
Behrens, Angela, Christopher Uggen, and Jeff Manza. 2003. Ballot manipulation and the “menace of negro domination”: Racial threat and felon disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850–2000. American Journal of Sociology 109 (3): 559–605.Google Scholar
Brooks, Clem. 2000. Civil rights liberalism and the suppression of a Republican political realignment in the U.S., 1972–1996. American Sociological Review 65 (4): 482–505.Google Scholar
Brown-Dean, Khalilah. 2003. The impact of elite framing on public attitudes toward felon disenfranchisement laws. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia.
Clark, Rebecca L., and Scott A. Anderson. 2000. Illegal aliens in federal, state, and local criminal justice systems. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.
Clear, Todd R., Dina R. Rose, Elin Waring, and Kristen Scully. 2003. Coercive mobility and crime: A preliminary examination of concentrated incarceration and social disorganization. Justice Quarterly 20(1): 33–64.Google Scholar
Congressional Record. 2002. 107th Cong., 2nd sess. Vol. 148, S. 3565, Debate on Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act of 2001, S797–S809.
Coyle, Michael. 2003. State-based advocacy on felony disenfranchisement. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.
Demleitner, Nora. 2000. Continuing payment on one's debt to society: The German model of felon disenfranchisement as an alternative. Minnesota Law Review 84 (4): 753–804.Google Scholar
Ewald, Alec C. 2002a. The ideological paradox of criminal disenfranchisement law in the United States. University of Wisconsin Law Review 2002 (5): 1045–1138.Google Scholar
Ewald, Alec C. 2002b. Of constitutions, politics, and punishment: Criminal disenfranchisement law in comparative context. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston.
Fellner, Jamie, and Marc Mauer. 1998. Losing the vote: The impact of felony disenfranchisement laws in the United States. Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project.
Fletcher, George. 1999. Disenfranchisement as punishment: Reflections on the racial uses of Infamia. UCLA Law Review 46:1895–1908.Google Scholar
Freedberg, Sydney P. 1998. Special report: Felons vote too—but it's a crime. Miami Herald, February 15, sec. A.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M. 1993. Crime and punishment in American history. New York: Basic Books.
Furman, Jesse. 1996. Political illiberalism: The paradox of disenfranchisement and the ambivalences of Rawlsian justice. Yale Law Journal 106 (4): 1197–1231.Google Scholar
Goodwin-Gill, Guy S. 1994. Free and fair elections: International law and practice. Geneva: Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Harvard Law Review. 1989. The disenfranchisement of ex-felons: Citizenship, criminality, and “the purity of the ballot box.” 102 (6): 1300–17.
Harvard Law Review 2002. One person, no vote: The laws of felon disenfranchisement. 115 (7): 1939–63.
Harvey, Alice. 1994. Ex-felon disenfranchisement and its influence on the black vote: The need for a second look. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (3): 1145–89.Google Scholar
Hench, Virginia E. 1998. The death of voting rights: The legal disenfranchisement of minority voters. Case Western Law Review 48 (4): 727–98.Google Scholar
Hunter v. Underwood. 471 U.S. 222 (1985).
Itkowitz, Howard, and Lauren Oldak. 1973. Restoring the ex-offender's right to vote: Background and developments. American Criminal Law Review 11 (1): 721–70.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Robert Y. Shapiro. 2000. Politicians don't pander: Political manipulation and the loss of democratic responsiveness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Keyssar, Alexander. 2000. The right to vote: The contested history of democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books.
Kidwell, David, Phil Long, and Geoff Dougherty. 2000. Hundreds of felons cast votes illegally. Miami Herald, December 1, National section.Google Scholar
Klinkner, Philip A., and Rogers M. Smith. 1999. The unsteady march: The rise and decline of racial equality in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kousser, J. Morgan. 1999. Colorblind injustice: Minority voting rights and the undoing of the second reconstruction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Laub, John H., Daniel S. Nagin, and Robert J. Sampson. 1998. Trajectories of change in criminal offending: Good marriages and the desistance process. American Sociological Review 63 (2): 225–38.Google Scholar
Levinson, Joe. 2001. Barred from voting. London: Prison Reform Trust.
Mauer, Marc, and Meda Chesney-Lind. 2002. Invisible punishment: The collateral consequences of mass imprisonment. New York: New Press.
Manza, Jeff. 2000. Race and the underdevelopment of the American welfare state. Theory and Society 30 (6): 819–32.Google Scholar
Manza, Jeff, Clem Brooks, and Christopher Uggen. 2004. Civil death or civil rights? Public attitudes towards felon disenfranchisement in the United States. Public Opinion Quarterly 68 (2):276–87.Google Scholar
Manza, Jeff, and Christopher Uggen. Forthcoming. Locked out: Felon disenfranchisement and American democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Maruna, Shadd 2001. Making good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
McBride, Jessica, and Linda Spice. 2000. Felons turn up on city's list of November 7 voters: Spot check shows at least 2 appear ineligible for ballots. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, November 29.
McDonald, Michael P., and Samuel L. Popkin. 2001. The myth of the vanishing voter. American Political Science Review 95 (4): 963–74.Google Scholar
Mendelberg, Tali. 2001. The race card, campaign strategy, implicit messages, and the norm of equality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pager, Devah. 2003. The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology 108 (5): 937–75.Google Scholar
Petersilia, Joan. 2003. When prisoners come home: Parole and prisoner reentry. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pettus, Katherine. 2002. Felony disenfranchisement in the contemporary United States: An ancient practice in a modern polity. PhD diss., Columbia University.
Pinaire, Brian, and Milton Heumann. 2003. Barred from the vote: Public attitudes toward felon disenfranchisement of felons. Fordham Urban Law Journal 30 (5): 1519–50.Google Scholar
Plannic, Zdarvko. 1987. Should imprisoned criminals have a constitutional right to vote? Canadian Journal of Law and Society 2 (2): 153–64.Google Scholar
Rajan, Sara. 2003. A modified version of double jeopardy—Rehabilitated African American felons barred from the voting box. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia.
Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Richardson v. Ramirez. 418 U.S. 24 (1974).
Rogers, Donald W., ed. 1992. Voting and the spirit of American democracy: Essays on the history of voting and voting rights in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Rothman, David J. 1980. Conscience and convenience: The asylum and its alternatives in Progressive America. Boston: Little Brown.
Rottinghaus, Brandon. 2003. Incarceration and enfranchisement: International practices, impact, and recommendations for reform. International Foundation for Election Systems. http://www.ifes.org/research_comm/08_18_03_Manatt_Brandon_Rottinghaus.pdf.
Sampson, Robert J., and John H. Laub. 1993. Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Shapiro, Andrew. 1993. Challenging criminal disenfranchisement under the Voting Rights Act: A new strategy. Yale Law Journal 103 (2): 537–66.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Ian. 2002. The state of democratic theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Shklar, Judith. 1991. American citizenship: The quest for inclusion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Smith, Tom W. 1990. Liberal and conservative trends in the United States since World War II. Public Opinion Quarterly 54 (3): 479–507.Google Scholar
Stuart, Guy. 2002. Databases, felons, and voting: Bias and partisanship of the Florida felons' list in the 2000 elections. Unpublished manuscript, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Thompson, Dennis F. 2002. Just elections: Creating a fair electoral process in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Travis, Jeremy, Amy L. Solomon, and Michelle M. Waul. 2001. From prison to home: The dimensions and consequences of prisoner reentry. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.
Trop v. Dulles. 356 U.S. 86 (1958).
Uggen, Christopher. 2000. Work as a turning point in the life course of criminals: A duration model of age, employment, and recidivism. American Sociological Review 65 (4): 529–46.Google Scholar
Uggen, Christopher, and Jeff Manza. 2002. Democratic contraction? The political consequences of felon disenfranchisement in the United States. American Sociological Review 67 (6): 777–803.Google Scholar
Uggen, Christopher, and Jeff Manza 2004. Lost voices: The civic and political views of disenfranchised felons. In Imprisoning America: The social effects of mass incarceration, ed. Mary Pattillo, David Weiman, and Bruce Western, 165–204. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention. 2003. The seventh United Nations survey on crime trends and the operations of criminal justice systems (1998–2000). http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/seventh_survey/7sv.pdf.
U.S. Department of Justice. 1993. Survey of state prison inmates, 1991. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
U.S. Department of Justice 1996a. Noncitizens in the federal criminal justice system. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney 1996b. Civil disabilities of convicted felons: A state-by-state survey. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
U.S. Department of Justice 2001. Census of jails, 1999. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
U.S. Department of Justice 2002. Probation and parole in the United States, 2001. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
U.S. Department of Justice 2003a. Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
U.S. Department of Justice 2003b. Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2002. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Visher, Christy A., and Jeremy Travis. 2003. Transitions from prison to community: Understanding individual pathways. Annual Review of Sociology 29: 89–113.Google Scholar
Walker, Samuel. 1980. Popular justice: A history of American criminal justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Walmsley, Roy. 2002. World prison population list. 3rd ed. Research Findings 116. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/r166.pdf.
Ways v. Shively. 264 Neb. 250 (2002).
Wiebe, Robert H. 1995. Self-rule: A cultural history of American democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.