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Rights for felons essay
Rights for felons essay
Rights for felons essay
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Over the past twenty years, states across this country have made significant progress scaling back defunct laws that collectively denying voting rights to millions of American citizens with criminal convictions. Unlike Florida, the state has a nearly two-hundred-year-old law that bans people from voting for life if they have a conviction.
Envision if nearly every adult citizen living in Washington D.C. lost their right to vote. That is the reality in “The Sunshine” State. According to estimates from the Sentencing Project, nearly three million Americans across Florida have permanently lost the right to vote even though they have finished their sentences.
Voters should consider the essences of a second chance for someone who has committed
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“To impose a permanent ban or to require an additional waiting period on the quintessential element of citizenship, the right to vote is to deny that which is given by birth or achieved by naturalization — citizenship. The right to vote has been jealously guarded since the founding of the United States.
It has taken constitutional amendments and legislative acts for all groups to be granted the right to vote, and thereby recognized as full citizenships. Legally, African-Americans have achieved the status of citizen. Practically, African-Americans have to continue to fight obstacles set up to deny their citizenship. Historically, in a number of United States' jurisdictions, African-Americans have had to challenge poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, whites-only primaries, and felon disenfranchisement laws, all designed to prohibit them from voting and thus negate their
"Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no good law-enforcement reason … Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable. . . We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate – not merely to convict, warehouse and forget"(Holder). Former Attorney General Eric Holder does not dispute that prisons play an important role in the justice system. He believes that along with punishing the inmate’s prisons should provide them with rehabilitation. With the already overpopulated prison system across the US there should be alternative for lesser nonviolent offences.
In document C, John W. Dean who was legal council the the U.S. President Richard M. Nixon said, “While compulsion of any kind is a restriction, so is the compulsion to drive only on the right side of the road. Requiring citizens to vote is no more restrictive than requiring them to register for the draft. And it is far less restrictive than requiring us, for example, to attend school; to serve on juries, possibly for weeks or months at a time; to pay taxes; or to serve in the military when drafted”(Dean). That shows the multitude of laws or requirements in America that are less important than voting, but are required. Voting is for the good of the country, yet people won't vote, but won't bat an eye when they are forced into jury duty.
Today, millions of American citizens are working and paying their taxes and have a productive life in the community(3). raising families and going to work but do not have a voice in local or national affairs that may or may not even affect them(3). To be blunt, if we keep denying released felons the right to vote, we will keep losing touch with the fundamentals of our democracy. Our poll numbers will keep going down, and people who want to vote won’t be able to. We will be denying them a helpful tool for reintegration or rehabilitation, even if it doesn’t.
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.
Felon voting laws limit the restrictions for a felon to vote on any election. “Felon voting has not been federally regulated because some people argue that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be tied to felon disenfranchisement and the Congress has the authority to legislate felon voting in federal elections.” Felon disenfranchisement is excluding people otherwise eligible to vote from voting due to conviction of a criminal offence, usually restricted to the more serious class of crimes, felonies. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures and The Sentencing Project, 1 in 40 adults were unable to vote due to a felony conviction in the 2008 elections. One purpose of the felon voting laws is the uncertainty of trusting
26, 2007 editorial "Another No Vote on Felons," published in the Washington Times: “Even in nearby Massachusetts, no stranger to progressivism, voters in 2000 supported a constitutional amendment to bar inmates from voting. The reason is clear: Most people think perpetrators of serious crimes have violated the public trust and cannot be permitted to help determine the future of the communities they harmed”. This view point is helpful to help undecided people see the potential harm of letting free convicted prisoners vote. Also, it is interesting how the very thought of convicted felons vote places such concern in the law abiding citizens’ thoughts. One may notice that particular past criminals may not have the best interest in what best for the community. Furthermore, one may notice that prisoners may be cut off from the events of the world, and wouldn’t have information to help them elect officials for the communities they may harmed. In, addition this may be true under the circumstance that some felons are not capable of making great choices for the community as a whole. As well as, if they have harmed the community they shouldn’t be able to vote on the wellbeing of the people they have
Several of These states will restore the voting rights of convicted felons once the probation and/or parole have been completed and the re-entry is complete. But some of our fellow citizens will have their right to vote permanently. revoked.... ... middle of paper ...
...he right to vote. I made a ten question survey that asked questions about letting convicted felons have the right to vote in major elections throughout America. Thirteen out of thirty high school students said that convicted felons should have the right to vote because they are American citizens. The other seventeen people I surveyed said that they should not have the right to vote because they had their chance to perform correctly in society and failed miserably. As you can now see, I have given you many reasons to see that convicted felons should not have the right to vote. They cannot be trusted with such a responsibility as voting for this country’s next leader.
African Americans have a history of struggles because of racism and prejudices. Ever since the end of the Civil War, they struggled to benefit from their full rights that the Constitution promised. The fourteenth Amendment, which defined national citizenship, was passed in 1866. Even though African Americans were promised citizenship, they were still treated as if they were unequal. The South had an extremely difficult time accepting African Americans as equals, and did anything they could to prevent the desegregation of all races. During the Reconstruction Era, there were plans to end segregation; however, past prejudices and personal beliefs elongated the process.
Mass incarceration has put a large eye-sore of a target on the United States’ back. It is hurting our economy and putting us into more debt. It has considerable social consequences on children and ex-felons. Many of these incarcerations can be due to the “War on Drugs”. We should contract the use of incarceration.
That’s around 35 million people unable to vote due to the enforcement of government identification cards. These people include and are not exclusive to the elderly, people without permanent addresses, and transgender people who have non-matching gender on their identification cards. Of the 31 states that enforce government identification cards prior to voting, 8 states require strict photo identification. It is estimated that at least 16 million people able to vote do not have eligible government photo identification cards, according to the Brennan Center. Texas alone has 600,000 people that do not fit this category.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits extra punishment for a crime, being unable to vote seems to be more than unnecessary. That means that these disenfranchisement laws are unconstitutional. Some might say that they have committed a serious crime that was a danger to society so therefore they should not be granted the right to vote. However if someone has completely paid for their mistakes to society, then society should return the favor and give them back their right to vote. By placing them in prison we choose what punishment is fit for the crime.
the right to vote is a natural right that comes with citizenship. To deny a certain group
The term criminal desistance refers to when offenders desist, or stop, committing crime. Desistance from crime exists when an individual has an absence of criminal behavior in their lives for a sustained period of time. By studying desistance, a better understanding of what causes individuals to commit crime is created; as well as, a better understanding as to why certain individuals discontinue their lives of crime. The criminal justice field often encompasses, serving justice by locking people up and keeping the “bad guys” away from the general public. Little thought was given as to what can be done in order to help prevent people from committing crime, until more recent years. Most criminological theories attempt to explain why people commit
Imagine that you and your loved one were going out on a typical Sunday night walk. All of a sudden, you hear a deafening sound of a gunshot and you look to see that your loved one had fallen down, and is on the ground, bleeding profusely and is in helpless pain. The felon probably wouldn’t care what happened, and they wouldn’t think much of it. They would only think of it as just that they killed another person. However, the victim’s family wouldn’t let this pass. They would remember this night and be in pain for the rest of their lives. Allowing felons to vote should not be something that is allowed. How would everyone feel if there was a felon that committed gruesome crimes and impacted so many people’s lives in a negative way, that would