Category: Commentary

Why shouldn’t everybody with a felony conviction be allowed to vote?

The editors of the New York Times are critical of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s recent veto of a law that would have allowed anyone with a felony conviction to vote if they are living in the free community.  See “A Bad Voting Ban,” June 1, 2015.  Maryland’s law now disenfranchises anyone convicted of a “felony and . . . actually serving a court-ordered sentence of imprisonment, including any term of parole or probation, for the conviction.” The Times editorial points out that Maryland changed its law to restore voting rights automatically upon completion of sentence in 2007, and that disenfranchisement based upon conviction is generally a punitive relic of slavery. So if felony disenfranchisement laws are punitive relics, why should they be applied to anyone, even people who are still in prison?   The logic of the Times editors’ position would seem to support voting by prisoners, as happens in Vermont and Maine and in many parts of Europe.  An argument against voting by prisoners based on disenfranchisement as an integral part of court-imposed punishment would apply equally to probationers and parolees. The notion that prisoners no longer have a connection to their communities is a self-fulfilling prophecy that runs […]

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Obama clemency process reportedly “more backlogged than it was before”

USA Today reports that unexpected administrative complications continue to delay the clemency initiative launched by the Obama administration last year.  More than a year after the Justice Department sought assistance from private organizations in identifying federal prisoners deserving of sentence commutation, that ancillary process has submitted only 31 cases for favorable presidential action.  In light of the fact that more than 1500 volunteer lawyers have been working since last fall on cases assigned by Clemency Project 2014, this modest number is surprising. Lawyers involved in the effort say the year-old clemency initiative has been hampered by the complexity of the cases and questions about the eligibility criteria, which may still be too strict to help most of the prison population. The result is a system that appears even more backlogged than it was before the initiative began.

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The real experts in criminal justice reform

The following piece by CCRC board member Glenn Martin first appeared on May 18 in the blog of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency For me, exiting a New York state prison in 2000 after serving six years was a rebirth. As a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, my mission started to crystallize. I wanted to be a voice for the countless intelligent, earnest, and genuinely good people that I was leaving behind. Reflecting on the 2.3 million people in US prisons and jails and another 5.6 million under correctional supervision—mostly young black and brown men and women—I kept asking myself, “If prison is where we send bad people who do bad things, where do we send good people who do bad things?” I was first bound by handcuffs in 1995, and though I haven’t known their debilitating grip for years, the hypocrisy and destructiveness of our criminal justice system has remained with me ever since.

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Copyright dispute roils federally-funded database of collateral consequences

Should a compilation of collateral consequences mandated by federal law and prepared with federal funds be freely available to states and members of the public?  The Uniform Law Commission says yes, the American Bar Association says no. In an article posted on May 18, the Wall Street Journal pulled back the curtain on an on-going dispute between the ULC and the ABA over copyright restrictions the ABA has imposed on data in the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences (NICCC).  The ULC is concerned that restrictions on access and use of the NICCC data are likely to stymie adoption of the Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act (UCCCA), which requires that states create their own inventories.  The ABA contends that the existence of other potentially conflicting databases would create undesirable confusion about the meaning of the law.  An excerpt from the WSJ piece (a companion to another article on collateral consequences published the same day), follows:

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Taking a bite out of Apple’s restrictive hiring policies

  Apple, maker of the iPhone and iPad, came under fire earlier this month when the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that the company was prohibiting those convicted of a felony in the last 7 years from working on the construction of an enormous new corporate campus in Cupertino, California.  Under pressure from the iron workers union and advocates for fair hiring policies, the company quickly reversed course: We recognize that this may have excluded some people who deserve a second chance. We have now removed that restriction and instructed our contractors on the project to evaluate all applicants equally, on a case-by-case basis, as we would for any role at Apple. But many believe that Apple can do more to end employment discrimination against those with criminal records and can set an example for the tech industry and the country in the process.

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