DEMOCRACY BEHIND BARS

Author Sasha Abramsky talks about how mass incarceration -- and the
resulting disfranchisement of millions of Americans -- is destroying
our democracy.

In his new book, "Conned: How Millions of Americans Went to Prison,
Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House,"
award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky takes us on a journey across
the nation, documenting through personal interviews of people in
prison, former prisoners, state legislators and advocates how felon
disfranchisement laws fundamentally undermine America's democratic ideals.

Today, nearly 5 million Americans are disfranchised from the right to
vote either because they are in prison, on parole or probation, or
because they live in a state that extends disfranchisement beyond the
end of one's sentence. Racial, ethnic and economic disparities in the
criminal justice system, and the "war on drugs" have resulted in the
most severe impact hitting communities of color. Where
African-Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13
percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for
drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses,
causing critics to call the war on drugs the "New Jim Crow."
Nationally, an estimated 13 percent of African-American men are
unable to vote because of a felony conviction. That's seven times the
national average.

The United States is the only "democracy" in which people who have
served their sentences can still lose their right to vote. As Jamaica
S., a 25-year-old on probation in Tennessee who lost her right to
vote shared in "Conned," "It seems when you're convicted of a felony,
the scarlet letter is there. You take it everywhere with you."

We met up with Sasha to learn more about his time writing "Conned,"
the impact of disfranchisement and the reform measures being fought
at the state level to repair our broken democracy.

Cole Krawitz: Sasha, tell us how you started to cover the impact of
disfranchisement and voter restoration on the nation.

Sasha Abramsky: I had been writing about criminal justice issues for
years, and was particularly fascinated with the broader political and
economic impact of a series of policy choices made from the 1970s to
the present day that had the effect of massively expanding the
country's criminal justice system. The numbers were extraordinary:
America had gone from having fewer than half a million people in jail
and prison in the early 1970s to having over two million people
behind bars by the turn of the century. I knew that, as the war on
drugs, in particular, played out, it was having a huge effect on
labor markets, on family structure, on community viability in poor
neighborhoods; quite simply, in many instances so many people were
being hauled off to jail and prison that entire communities were
being dislocated. I also knew that ex-prisoners faced an array of
post-sentence penalties -- from restrictions on what kinds of jobs
they could get through to denial of welfare benefits, student loans
and public housing if their felony convictions were drug-related. I
had also heard that there were limits placed on their voting rights.

The day after the 2000 presidential election, I posted a story on
Mother Jones online about a "purge" of suspected felons and about the
impact it had clearly had on the Gore-Bush outcome. From there, I was
hooked. The topic was, quite simply, too juicy to ignore.

CK: I was fascinated by your choice to use Alexis de Tocqueville's
"Democracy in America" to help narrate "Conned." Why de Tocqueville?

SA: De Tocqueville has always fascinated me. He's a European
aristocrat who comes over to America in the 1830s to study the
country's prison system; and he ends up spending nine months touring
the country, absolutely intrigued by its democratic possibilities and
by the expanding institutions of democracy and culture of democracy
that he sees all around. In some instances he romanticizes the
country -- and he certainly underestimates the central role of
slavery. But his enthusiasm for the best aspects of American life is
infectious.

Like de Tocqueville, I also grew up in Europe; in London. And I, too,
have found myself, as an adult, fascinated by America's culture and politics.

In deciding to travel around the country for several months exploring
what I saw as a major failing of America's democratic institutions --
its failure to protect the vote for millions of Americans caught up
in a seemingly ever-expanding penal system -- I wanted a literary
companion who could be used to compare the country's democratic
potential with the somewhat more tawdry realities I was encountering.
De Tocqueville struck me as the perfect companion. Over four months,
his writings continually provided insight and prescient observations.
I hope that, in using de Tocqueville in this way, my book becomes
something more than a narrow criminal justice book, becoming instead
a commentary on American democracy, its successes and its shortfalls.

CK: One of the myths that I think "Conned" strongly helps dispel is
the idea that people who have been disfranchised don't want to vote.
Why do some legislators continue to disregard how, when people are
actually asked if they want to vote, they overwhelming say yes, and
in states where law allows and advocates have helped let people know
about their rights, that people do vote?

SA: There's a pervasive stereotype out there that criminals, as a
group, have absolutely no political interests or desire to
participate in any communal goings-on. Now, in reality there is no
such thing as a single, monolithic "criminal type." Some people
convicted of crimes are indeed utterly sociopathic -- hardened,
violent and predatory and, yes, it may well be true that these
individuals (a) wouldn't want to vote, and that (b) we as a society
are safer with them behind bars and better off not participating
politically. But you can't craft umbrella disenfranchisement
legislation for all felons based on the behaviors and attitudes of a
minority of felons.

The large majority of people who get caught up in the criminal
justice system do not fit the sociopathic profile: In fact, over one
million jail and prison inmates were sentenced after committing
nonviolent offenses. They commit crimes, many of them drug-related or
generated by dire poverty, they serve their time, and at the end of
their sentence, they want to get on with their lives. Now, some of
these men and women are apolitical -- just like millions of their
nonfelon counterparts -- and don't see the importance of voting. Many
of them, however, desperately want to vote and feel shamed and, in a
sense, emasculated by being unable to vote.

It was this burning desire to vote, expressed to me in numerous
interviews I conducted around the country, that most surprised me.
Before starting my reporting, to a degree I'd bought into the
stereotype: I'd assumed I was covering a story with a vast
philosophical implication, one that went to the heart of theories of
democracy and universal suffrage, but with only limited practical
impact, precisely because I'd assumed most felons wouldn't vote even
if they could.

In a sense, I thought, going in, that Florida 2000, when the nonvotes
of felons clearly mattered, was an aberration rather than something
that spoke to a larger issue. Instead, I found people in state after
state, many in states with closely divided electorates, who were
absolutely devastated by not being allowed to vote. There were people
like Jamaica S., who had been convicted of a low-end felony, had been
put on probation instead of being sent to prison, but had lost her
voting rights; there was a 30-something-year-old man who owned a
small taxi fleet, who couldn't vote because of a drug crime from when
he was a teenager; there was a furniture store employee in rural
Virginia who'd been trying for the better part of a decade, without
success, to get back his voting rights after being convicted of a drug crime.

To me, that became the central focus of my book: the fact that so
many people who so want to participate in the political process are
being told by their own government officials that they cannot and
should not vote.

CK: Public opinion data shows strong support for reform -- 80 percent
of the public supports restoration of voting rights for ex-felons who
have completed their sentences, and 64 percent and 62 percent
respectively support the right of probationers and parolees to vote.
Has this impacted or translated into legislative action?

SA: Over the past several years, many states have enacted limited
reforms. In Maryland, for example, permanent disenfranchisement was
replaced by a waiting period - which itself is now being challenged
by Democratic legislatures. In Alabama, at least in theory, the
process by which felons can apply to regain their vote has been
simplified, though only to a limited degree. New Mexico has abandoned
permanent disenfranchisement, as have several other states since
2000. Last year, Iowa governor Tom Vilsack signed an executive order
granting clemency regarding voting rights to tens of thousands of ex-felons.

Yet, a core number of holdout states remain, and unfortunately, these
are the states with the largest concentration of disenfranchised
citizens: Florida, Virginia, Alabama still to a large extent has an
extremely restricted franchise, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky. And
several other states place extreme, though not permanent,
restrictions on the voting rights of felons.

CK: You start your trip not in Florida or New York, but in Seattle,
Wash., highlighting how people's inability to fully pay off court
fees -- known as Legal Financial Obligations (LFOs) -- were blocking
them from the ability to vote. What do you think the impact will be
of the recent suit brought forward and won by the ACLU in Washington
state overturning this requirement?

SA: I started in Washington state because I wanted this to be a book
national in its scope, and I also wanted my readers to really get a
sense that this problem was not something that could be located
solely in the Old South. Washington, in many ways, is a very liberal
state, and thus the scale of disenfranchisement present there was, to
me, both surprising and also deeply disturbing. I got a sense that
these really were invisible people. In Washington, I interviewed
numerous ex-prisoners who were living law-abiding lives in the
community, but they were unable to pay off all the fines and court
costs levied in responses to criminal actions that, in some
instances, had occurred decades earlier. As a result, they were not
allowed to vote.

The recent lawsuit overturned this state of affairs. The courts ruled
that people couldn't be deprived of their voting rights simply
because they were too poor to pay off all their fines and court fees.
It's an important ruling, because it significantly broadens the
franchise, by many tens of thousands of people - and, remember, this
is in a state in which the governor was elected by only a couple
hundred votes last time around. The big question, though, and it's
one that I address in my book in some detail, is whether theoretical
reenfranchisement will translate into a real expansion of the
franchise. For this to happen, there's going to have to be a pretty
intense public education campaign to make people aware of the new
state of affairs surrounding voting rights.

CK: Your book documents how the lack of dissemination of correct
information about the law -- by the Department of Corrections or the
Board of Elections -- continues to disfranchise thousands. This has
been reconfirmed by numerous studies, including a recent survey by
Brennan Center for Justice, Legal Action Center and Demos of 63
county boards of elections in New York. How were advocates and
organizers on the ground tackling this all too common problem of when
policy doesn't get implemented effectively?

SA: It's a huge problem. In state after state, researchers have
found, and my reporting confirmed, that many election officials
simply do not know the state laws surrounding felons' voting rights.
Moreover, other public officials who deal directly with prisoners and
ex-prisoners also don't know the law. This goes for probation and
parole officials as well as prison employees.

In my book, I tell the story of a group of elderly ladies in Utah who
greet prisoners as they come out of prison and try to break through
their misapprehensions about voting rights by getting them to
register to vote the minute they regain their freedom. I also write
about lawyers and community activists in various states who are
working to educate public officials as well as ex-prisoners about
voting laws in their states.

It's an extremely hard issue to get a handle on, but it's vital if
we, as a country, are going to meaningfully seek to restore the
principle of universal adult suffrage.

CK: In each state, "Conned" demonstrates the link between racism and
voting rights restrictions, as well as many legislators'
unwillingness to discuss the issue of race and reenfranchisement --
how has this impacted the work that people are trying to do on the state level?

SA: While the concept of felon disenfranchisement goes back to
early-modern Europe, and while colonial-era America imposed
restrictions on felons' political participation, it's also undeniable
that the South's political leadership in the post-civil war period
redefined felony codes with the specific intent of disenfranchising
as many African-Americans as possible.

No politician today will go on the record and defend
disenfranchisement by embracing the notion that it falls most heavily
on African-Americans. In fact, politicians generally swear blind
their support for disenfranchisement is entirely race-neutral, and
consciously, that might well be the case. But, the impact is clearly
not race-neutral. Moreover, I can't conceive of a situation in which
one quarter of white voters were removed from the voter rolls that
wouldn't immediately lead to dramatic political action to overturn
the injustice.

Does it impact how people organize against these laws at the state
level? The answer has to be "yes." By default, this is a civil rights
issue. Felon disenfranchisement in an era of mass incarceration
clearly has done more to undo the gains of the 1965 Voting Rights Act
than any other single event. Lawsuits have been filed on 14th and
15th Amendment grounds -- though these lawsuits have generally had
very limited results. And, increasingly, black caucuses in state
legislatures have embraced the cause of reenfranchisement.

CK: People of color rightfully critique a primarily white political
and activist establishment, including many progressives and liberals,
as being all too comfortable with the high incarceration rates of
people of color in this country, and the resulting disfranchisement
from housing, jobs and voting that has disproportionately harmed
communities of color. How do you think "Conned" might help to change
this so that the systemic problems with, and those created by, our
criminal justice system are better understood?

SA: "Conned" demonstrates how "criminal justice" cannot be understood
as a hermetically sealed issue. Instead, the policies and practices
that have so dramatically enlarged the number of people convicted of
felonies in America, and the number of people sentenced to spend
parts of their lives behind bars, need to be understood as part of a
larger societal transformation.

In an era of mass incarceration, progressives need to be looking for
linkages, seeking to explore ways in which society responds to
poverty and to social disorder. At the moment, our society has made a
series of choices that means we devote an increasing number of
dollars to funding punishment-based institutions. At the same time,
we dramatically underfund community drug rehabilitation programs,
community mental health services, job training programs and the like.
Not surprisingly, given these priorities, prisons have come to be
first-tier response mechanisms for a host of deep-rooted social problems.

Now, obviously, most everyone wants to live in a peaceful society,
one not driven by crime and violence. The question is how best to
achieve that. I'd hope that "Conned" opens up the debate here: Does
simply locking up ever larger numbers of people best serve this goal?
Does an over-reliance on incarceration come with a host of other,
largely hidden costs? In the arena of voting rights, my book explores
these costs. It looks at how society as a whole is now being impacted
by out-of-whack sentencing policies and by the overlap of criminal
justice institutions with the voting rights of citizens.

I'd hope that readers of my book come away with a better
understanding of the ways in which current incarceration policies
produce a host of dysfunctional societal outcomes.

Cole Krawitz is communications and events associate at Demos. His
work has appeared in New Voices Magazine, Clamor Magazine, and Nashim
journal. Cole can be found blogging on Jewschool.com.