Morning Reads for Friday, April 26, 2019

I think of it like this… Meghan McCain got all huffy on the The View and said she doesn’t think the Boston Marathon bomber “should have any rights in this country.”

That’s not how America works. The guy is an American citizen. By virtue of that alone he is entitled to the protections and rights afforded him under the US Constitution. Its why he had a right to fair trial before a jury of his peers. Its why he’s protected from cruel and arbitrary punishment during his incarceration. The nature of his crime does not negate his citizenship and does not render him unworthy of the protections of the US Constitution. That McCain, or anyone, would proclaim this line of thinking is perverse and strikingly un-American.

If one views the right to vote as a fundamental right protected by the US Constitution – note, it is – then he is entitled to that right. Now, there’s a debate to be had over whether that right should be restricted for those who’ve committed certain crimes. After all, we limit the 2nd Amendment rights of those with felony convictions when we bar them from gun ownership and we limit the 1st and 4th Amendment rights of those convicted of sex crimes when we require public reporting and limit the places they can live and work. The central questions need to be: 1) what purpose does the restriction serve? and 2) does that purpose override the importance of the right being restricted?

With regard to banning ex-felons from owning firearms, the purpose is clearly to limit access to deadly weapons by those who’ve previously shown a propensity for using those weapons to carry out crimes. Making sex offenders comply with registries and notification requirements serves a similar purpose: limiting the risk that someone who has shown a propensity for a certain type of crime will commit that crime in the future. In both of these circumstances, there’s a clear public safety interest that’s implicated. I don’t see any public safety rationale for limiting the ability of those in prison to vote. In fact, I don’t really see any rationale for denying these individuals the franchise, outside of a “well, it’s punishment.”

Any serious study of the social science around criminal justice, inmate rehabilitation, and reducing recidivism shows that we can reduce crime and recidivism if we treat inmates and former inmates like human beings. The isolation of prison and the stigma attached when one gets out wind up pushing people back into the habits and behaviors that put them in prison in the first place. Giving people the right to vote – even people who do bad things – is a recognition that, despite their crimes, these individuals are still Americans at the end of the day and are still deserving of the same rights and privileges their citizenship affords them.