How much would an extra 5.85 million votes in any government election affect our country? The answer is tremendously, but what if these were irrational, dangerous individuals? Nearly two percent of the entire United States population is prohibited from voting due to incarceration or probation. The question is: is this fair? Should prisoners have the right to vote? Are the incarcerated still considered citizens? Does committing a crime make them irrational by law? I personally believe if an individual commits a crime out of irrational behavior, he or she is incapable of thinking as a rational adult in an important decision making process of a government election.
Some believe prison should be a place for punishment where criminals go to pay for their wrongdoings. Others believe it is rehabilitation for prisoners to learn from their mistakes. Either way, prisoners’ constitutional rights can be limited during their sentence. Inmates’ rights to privacy and freedom, obviously, are generally revoked among the beginning of their time in prison. However, they are protected by the Eighth Amendment from cruel and unusual punishment. Along with their rights to privacy and freedom, their right to vote is also retracted. As said by an anonymous Times Reporter in The New Times, anyone that breaks the law doesn’t have the country’s best interest at heart. So how can such people be allowed to vote? This statement speaks the truth. Why allow someone who doesn’t respect the nation’s rules vote in elections that decide them? There is almost no argument over this situation in the United States. According to Corey Brettschneider from Politico Magazine, Maine and Vermont are the only two states that allow prisoners to vote, and Massachusetts and Utah recently revoked the right. This happened in Massachusetts due to a political action committee started by prisoners which angered Governor Jane Smith into stating, “Criminals behind bars have no business deciding who should govern the law-abiding citizens of the Commonwealth.” If people behind bars don’t have the right to vote, then legally, who does? In the Fifteenth Amendment, government prohibits itself from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Therefore, any citizen of right mind in the United States has the right to vote. This leads us to another question: what defines a citizen? According to the United States Immigration Services, citizenship is defined as having been born in the United States or certain territories or outlying possessions of the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States or having a parent or parents who were citizens at the time of your birth. When an individual breaks the law, he/she is removing themselves from the jurisdiction of the United States and breaking the social contract between man and government. When an irrational individual decides to break the law of their abiding nation, they subject themselves to adequate punishment for such behavior.
Upon incarceration, prisoners are typically disenfranchised, or stripped of their right to vote. When someone is sentenced to prison, they are no longer a part of society. They are locked up because they are a danger to society. Rather a common thief or a mass murderer, a fair trial deemed that criminal as unfit to live with others in a safe manner. When you break the law, you have no business enjoying the rights that would otherwise have been at your disposal had the crime not been committed (DEBATE: Should prisoners be allowed to vote? By anonymous reporter 2014 https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/418).
While incarcerated, prisoners do still retain their civil liberties, which are given by God and cannot be infringed upon by man, but these can be limited due to security reasons. Along with these, other rights are still given to even the most wicked prisoners. The first of these is the right to humane facilities and conditions. For example, an individual waiting for a trial who has not yet been proven guilty cannot be punished or treated as guilty while awaiting said trial. Any treatment that violates a person’s dignity or that could be considered inhumane could be found as cruel and unusual, which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Next is the right to express complaints about the prison housing them, and the right to access a court to express such complaints. Follows by this is the right to freedom from racial segregation and sexual crime. The Americans with Disabilities Act gives prisoners another right, enabling them to assert their access to prison programs fitting their needs. Prisoners also have the right to medical attention as needed, along with the treatment of mental health issues if deemed adequate. The final right of prisoners is the right to a hearing for transferral to a mental health facility.
What prisoners cannot assume to be their right is that of which to vote. Crime does not go unpunished in our country, and people cannot expect to violate the law and have no consequences. Such consequences include disenfranchisement.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. And when you are doing time, do not expect your rights to be considered because when the crime was being committed, the one responsible didn’t consider anything…Prisons are for separation and rehabilitation, not pampering them with rights. (Anonymous Times author 2018)
Casper Walsh of The Guardian claims that denying voting rights to criminals who receive a custodial sentence is dehumanizing and hinders rehabilitation. Justice Earl Warren also argued this cause by writing in a 1959 case stating: “Citizenship is not a right that expires upon misbehavior.” Section one of the 14th Amendment states the following:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws (United States Constitution Amendment XIV, Section 1).
This amendment gives individuals born in the United States a birthright to citizenship, and these individuals may not be revoked of this right. Although rare, it is possible for naturalized citizens to be denaturalized, or to be stripped of their citizenship. Naturalization is the process by which U.S. citizenship is granted to a foreign citizen or national after he or she fulfills the requirements established by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Denaturalization is simply the reversal of this act as it takes away his or her citizenship. Any citizen of the United States bears the right to a prompt, fair trial by jury, the right to vote in elections for public officials, the right to apply for federal employment requiring U.S. citizenship, and Freedom to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Basically, people are arguing that if the prisoners are still citizens, then why are they not able to vote?
As expressed by Kay J. Maxwell in Scholastic Magazine, voting is a process by which a person or a group of people expresses an opinion formally or officially. Voting is free and voluntary in all states; no one can be forced to vote. It is also a crime to try to stop another person from voting. Voting is private — no one can see how another person votes. A person may vote only once in any election. Each city is dividing into voting districts called precedents. The right to vote is granted to all U.S. citizens who are of sound mind and have not committed a felony.
In the state of Alabama, an individual is able to vote if he or she is a U.S. citizen, a resident of Alabama, and at least eighteen years old by Election Day. An individual is not allowed to vote if he or she has been legally declared "mentally incompetent" by a court, if he or she has been convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude, or if he or she is imprisoned.
Prisoners are simply not able to vote because they are criminals. They have proven to be irrational by breaking the law, and they do not have the appropriate mentality to make decisions regarding our nation’s government. Inmates are given many rights; voting just isn’t one of them. If having their voting rights revoked is so offending to the incarcerated, there is simply one solution: don’t commit the crime in the first place.
The United States is one of the strictest nations in the world when it comes to denying voting rights to felons. The right to vote in the United States is a sacred practice as we can voice our options directly into the government and make changes as needed. Felony disenfranchisement is the exclusion from voting of people otherwise eligible to vote due to conviction of a criminal offense, usually restricted to the more serious class of crimes known as felonies. Someone found guilty of manslaughter and later released on probation would be more likely to face disenfranchisement than someone with a mail fraud charge.
When imprisoned, criminals face a division between themselves and society. This wedge is driven by the irrational behavior that landed them behind bars. The prisoner is not only deprived of the freedom in society, but also loses his or her own voice in government. This disenfranchisement cannot be blamed on government for it it the irrational man’s fault for violating the law, ultimately revoking him of his right to vote. When behind bars, an individual is not at liberty to demand full rights.
Across the nation, state felon laws wildly vary, but the majority of states restore the right to vote after the complete process of prison, parole, and probation. Fifteen states restore voting rights immediately after prison, and in ten states, the right to vote may be lost permanently. The less popular options are restoration after prison and parole ,which three states undertake, and the most uncommon unrestricted voting in which individuals may vote from prison–only Maine and Vermont have this method in place.
The Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act protects the civil rights of people incarcerated in state or locally operated facilities by authorizing the Attorney General to investigate conditions of confinement and deem them fit or unfit for living. If deemed unfit, prisoners’ rights to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment would be infringed upon due to protection from such by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States the following:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This right protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. This right is also revoked while in prison. Inmates are constantly watched, searched, and sometimes have their personal items seized for safety precautions.
Released felons in the United States have different rights when it comes to voting in each
state. Their rights depend on the offense of the crime they committed and in which state they live in. It is up to the states to decide which crimes could be grounds for disenfranchisement, and they are not formally bound to restrict this to felonies; however, in most cases, they do. In most states, felons who have completed their sentence are allowed to vote again.
I believe if a criminal is convicted for an injustice, then they should lose their right to
vote while incarcerated. When they have finished serving their time, and prove to be of sound mind, then and only then should they be allowed to participate in crucial decision-making processes for our government.
We do have certain minimum, objective standards of responsibility and commitment to
our laws that we require people to meet before they are given a role in self-government. People who have committed serious crimes against fellow citizens don’t meet this standard. If they had the governments best interest at heart, why did they go against its laws? Felons do not have enough respect for the country to follow its rules; if there is no respect for something, why even choose to be apart of it? Anyone who has committed a serious crime has shown a lack in rational judgement, and has proven themselves unfit for important decision-making for the country.
This isn’t to say that people can’t change. Prisoners who display good behavior while
behind bars sometimes get early release, and are then given their rights back. The goal of prison is to improve those who were incarcerated and to prepare/educate them for their facilitation back into society.
Is it possible for inmates to prove they’re fit for their return to society? While it may be
difficult to prove one’s changed ways behind bars, most released convicts prove themselves worth in the probation and parole phases. Probation is the release of an offender from detention, subject to a period of good behavior under supervision. In this period of time, an inmate is released early for good behavior, yet still kept an eye on by a probation officer. Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court instead of serving time in prison. In the probation phase, an individual is given the opportunity to prove himself or herself worthy of the rights they once possessed again. By following all the rules, and keeping in good terms with his or her probation officer, an ex-convict has the ability to gain his or her rights back. Parole is almost the same thing just without an overseeing officer. Parole is defined as the release of a prisoner temporarily (for a special purpose) or permanently before the completion of a sentence, on the promise of good behavior.
If an individual commits a crime pertaining to a specific area of danger, a court may
subject that individual to certain prohibitions relating to the crime he or she committed. For example, when a person is convicted of an offense in which the person used a weapon, or threatened to use a weapon, the sentencing court has the power to prohibit the person from possessing a weapon for a certain period of time. The same principle may be implemented in a case involving drunk driving or vehicular manslaughter. The criminal may not be allowed to drive or own a car for the rest of his or her life. In the United States, loss of rights due to criminal conviction can take several forms, including voting disenfranchisement, exclusion from jury duty, and loss of the right to possess firearms.
While inmates are still in prison, they should not be able to vote. Letting them vote
undermines a longstanding social compact: those who commit a serious crime lose not only their freedom to live in society for a time but also their right to participate in democracy. If we allow them to vote, then what is stopping everyone from committing petty crimes? There must be consequences for improper actions. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, president of the California State Sheriffs' Assn. said, "We believe that there have to be consequences to your action, and the consequences of being a convicted felon are that you can't vote and you can't possess firearms…We believe those are appropriate consequences for felonious actions."
If you are unable to follow the law yourself, then you can’t make the law for everyone else that does. Felons have broken the social contract therefore giving up their right to participate in a civil society. If an individual commits a felony, he or she has shown poor judgment, and that they should therefore not have a voice in the political decision-making process of voting. That individual must serve his or her time behind bars and prove themselves to be of sound, rational mind to be trusted to live with others in society again. Then they are given their rights back. Criminals must first serve their time and pay for their injustices against society. In prison, they may reinvent themselves and become more rationally minded. This is the case in which one may prove themselves worthy of obtaining their partial or even full rights back.
In conclusion, prisoners should not be given the right to vote while incarcerated. However, they can serve their time and return to society with all civil rights in hand if proven to be rational. The best prevention for this arguable cause is the old saying, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
Works Cited
• Anonymous author. “Can Your U.S. Citizenship Be Revoked?” Findlaw, immigration.findlaw.com/citizenship/can-your-u-s-citizenship-be-revoked-.html.
• United States, Congress, “Constitution.” Constitution, Liberal, 1978.
• Reporter, Times. “DEBATE: Should Prisoners Be Allowed to Vote?” The New Times | Rwanda, Scholastic Magazine, 5 Sept. 2014, www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/418.
• Timm, Jane C. “Voting Is a Sacred Right. Even for Some Prisoners.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 26 Feb. 2018, 3:43 A.M., www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/states-rethink-prisoner-voting-rights-incarceration-rates-rise-n850406.
• Brettschneider, Corey, et al. “Why Prisoners Deserve the Right to Vote.” POLITICO, POLITICO, 21 June 2016, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/prisoners-convicts-felons-inmates-right-to-vote-enfranchise-criminal-justice-voting-rights-213979.