ex-con, ex-American

In the US, nearly 4 million people with felony convictions are barred from voting - kind of odd considering that technically we're guaranteed the right to vote. Much like the poll tax of yore, denying felons the right to vote turns voting into a privilege... which sounds a lot like a constitutional offense to me.

I realize that fighting for the rights of a population who presumably did something pretty bad (in order to earn their conviction) isn't so popular. But I thought the point of prison was the trade: you do something bad, you have to give up so many years of your life to one of the most evil places on earth... and then it's over, you've served your time. The idea, of course, is that prison is so miserable that the threat of it is enough to keep people from committing crimes, or at least more crimes.

Unfortunately, our system is not truly made for rehabilitation - it's made for recidivism. People going into jail for breaking and entering and come out knowing how to be murderers. Besides the criminal education, ex-cons, particularly felons, come out of prison with few resources: no money, few job prospects (would you hire an ex-con?) and then we add to it the disenfranchisement of taking away Constitutionally-given rights like voting.

The most personal example I have is the ex-boyfriend who attacked me and spent four years in prison. I spoke with him a couple of times while he was incarcerated - he had a plan, he understood he had to get out of Greensboro and away from his friends to have a healthy life but the last I heard, he is still in Greensboro with the same old crew, losing teeth and has seemingly moved far beyond his former drug of choice, pot.

It's totally pathetic but where else could he have gone?

Taking away the right to vote is just a symptom from the disease that is our "justice" system. If we want to see a lasting drop in our crime rates, we need to rehabilitate the system so that we can rehabilitate our criminals.

(Read the article that prompted this rant on Salon.)