Felons Voting Effect

• More than 4 million Americans are temporary or permanently prohibited to vote that’s 1 in every 50 citizens can’t vote

• African Americans and Latinos are very disproportionally presented among the prison population therefore prohibiting of the to vote effects policies

• More than 1.4 million African Americans cannot vote because of their felony conviction, which makes the number to 13 % nation wide

• States like Alabama, Florida, Iowa Mississippi NM VA WY 1-4 African Americans has lost for life the right to vote.

• 400 senate seated that has been elected since 1978 7 of them would have been different
• If disfranchisement had excised in 1960 then Nixon would have won over Kennedy by 225.000 votes.


• The 2000 elections which brought Florida to determine the fate of US for the next 4 years brought Bush winning over Al Gore which if felons in Florida were alloued to vote Al Gore would have been the 43rd president of US.



(Harvard law reviews, Uggen, Manza 2004,2002, King Mauer 2004 etc)

"But they all come back"

The United States Of America,
the country that incarcerates half of the prison population in the world, and where the crime is not declining. What is really going on? Is this a sign of experimenting with bad policies or is this because the crime is so high here that "nothing works"in this country, as some of criminologists have stated.
We as a community are willing to pay so much taxes for building and maintaining prisons and its personnel, but when it comes to rehabilitation programs we kind of step back and feel like that's not out responsibility. I think these ideas come from a basic rule that we as humans sometimes like to deal with the "momenta" problems without thinking about the future. All we want is: "lock them up and through away the key", get them out the society and therefore if they are locked up they cant commit crimes, they cant hurt us,but then we forget that "they all come back" and when these individuals get back from prison, often they bring a huge baggage with them: drug habits, visual and in- visual scares, emotions etc. With all these problems,trying to fit in the society will be hard. On the other hand, the community doesn't make it any easy for them. Having a permanent criminal record, denying housing, work and other services we just set the path for them to get back to prion again.Then we can feel good ones again by saying "yup we knew it, nothing works". Stigma is another factor that makes it very painful for these individuals to reintegrate in the society. However we as community do not feel responsible for the crime they committed therefore why should we care, right? Well,i think the story is not as simple as that.I am huge advocate of rehabilitation because it is cheaper, and more effective. By rehabilitating these individuals don't assume that we are cuddling them, OH we ARE still punishing them but what we are doing is that we are preventing another crime to happen because everyone that goes to prison eventually gets out of it, unless they are "life in Prison, or death row". Therefore we should have a better approach of what do we do with then when they come back?