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Not only do I think non-incarcerated felons should have the right to vote, I think currently incarcerated should as well. Hell, set up a voting location in the prison.
That’s how it works in most civilised countries.
That’s how it works in
mostcivilised countries.I added the qualifier mainly because of New Zealand. AFAIK the country has otherwise its shit together.
New Zealand also lets the team down by allowing medical advertising. IRC it’s the only country other than the US with prescription medical advertising.
It’s creeping into parts of the EU. I can’t remember exactly what the loophole is, something to do with not explicitly advertising the product but rather having like a sponsored message from the makers of WonderDrug™ to ask your doctor about treatment for X condition, but I’ve seen them pop up here and there. I have my doubts the EU is going to stamp it out, but I hope I’m wrong.
They’d like you to think that. Truth is there’s even less „checks and balances“ there than the already paper thin ones in the US. The courts have no teeth with the government and it’s a effectively unicameral system. Theoretically the King has executive power but he would never step in. Prisoners not being able to vote has been ruled by the courts to be against the Bill of Rights and they were just ignored.
Even better, let’s stop doing prisons
Certainly cutting back 9 out of 10 prisons is a good idea. I don’t object to the idea that there is a certain amount of people who need to be removed for their own and the public’s safety.
But is a prison really where someone like that should go/it should be called? I would argue those people should be in a mental asylum, not what we have as prisons today (though today’s mental asylums aren’t necessarily more humane)
Mental hospitals should be places where people with mental illnesses can go for care and treatment. They shouldn’t do double-duty as prisons.
True, but the opposite is the case now: several times more people with mental illness resulting in or at least contributing to unwanted behavior are imprisoned than are receiving any kind of treatment.
As indicated by the fact that the most incarceration-happy country in the world continues to have a much higher rate of violence and enrichment crimes than most rich countries, the prison industrial complex doesn’t work for anyone except for the people profiting financially and electorally from its abuses.
If you want to actually reduce crime and make a better society, poverty alleviation, improving mental health services, and restorative justice is the way to go.
The current model of increasingly draconian oppression only leads to MORE crime AND more false imprisonment.
Right. But there needs to be secure treatment facilities.
Something like Norway’s system is ideal imo
I mean, if responding to my comment about removing some people for “their own safety,” then sure, there are better places that prisons.
But really what I was saying is there are people who do and will continue to be violent toward others, and prisons probably are the right place for them.
But I’m in full agreement that the US incarcerates far far too many people that don’t fit into that description.
The justice system should, not is but should, be in the business of making things right for people who have been wronged and rehabilitating people who have done wrong, as an extension of preventing wrong from recurring, which is itself part of making things right for those wronged.
There is some theoretical minority of people who can’t be rehabilitated and don’t belong in medical treatment. There are some people where putting them in a medical facility would itself be an injustice to the staff and other patients. The vast majority of people with mental illness are perfectly safe and more likely to be the victim of a crime. Mixing them with billy mcSlapChop the worst person imaginable just creates a lot of dead people with poorly managed bipolar disorder.
The vast majority of crimes can be handled by the judge finding you guilty and then just letting you go.
But jail has to be the last resort not the first one.
I don’t think people realize how limited psychiatric hospitalizations are. If someone committed a crime because of impulsivity due to untreated mood or psychotic disorder, then a psychiatric stay would likely be appropriate. However, someone who is say psychopathic or committed a crime of passion but has no psychiatric history would get minimal to no benefit from a psych stay.
I’d settle for getting rid of for profit ones
Start with getting rid of private prisons, and then go from there
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That is how it works in a democracy
It is legal in most states for non felons to vote from prison/jail, of course some states make it difficult.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but there are no non-felons in prison. But there are those in county jails awaiting trial who are not yet convicted (or will be found not guilty) of a crime, and your point is an important one.
If we want to get too technical there are some states that place people that commit certain misdemeanors in prison as opposed to jails.
It’s not the majority, but it does happen.
Especially since those states are counting those prisoners among the residents in the census.
The entire fucking point is to get the benefits for those additional people, while not having to worry about them voting (likely against the people who put them there)
Important distinction, the census counts the prisoners as residents of the county in which the prison sits. The prisoners are almost always already residents of the state. It’s called prison gerrymandering, and it unfairly advantages the county and districts in which the prisons lie, almost always rural and almost always to Republican advantage.
In Canada, currently incarcerated people are allowed to vote by special ballot
Any government that can financially profit from its prisoners also has an incentive to imprison more of its population.
Well, the government isn’t profiting from it. Its the people running the government who are invested in private prison companies are personally profiting from it. Along with their golf buddies running said companies.
Privately run prisons as a for profit business is a crime against humanity.
The government would have got a payday when they sold off the prisons in the first place.
Perhaps. But I think many of the private prisons are either built from the ground up by the corporations, or the buildings are still owned by the government, but the companies are paid to operate them for the government.
Or wars.
In the US, slavery is legal for prisoners. The US has the largest prison population in the world. This is not a coincidence.
How come I can’t tell the difference between this slavery, and normal work?
Oh. Work is the same. But as a prisoner you get even less money. Between 0,12dollars and 1,41.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/inmate-prison-work-pay-united-states-6b540f
So the main difference between slavery and work is you get paid less, and don’t have the option of being permanently unemployed and homeless.
Are you being for real right now?
You are aware that the thirteenth amendment (the one that abolishes slavery) explicitly allows for slavery to continue “as punishment”.
This isn’t like some weird leftist take, slavery is quite literally legal in US prisons.
Oh, sorry Claude, forgot you don’t understand words.
Love when the username checks out!
And not having the right to say “fuck you” to the boss and leave.
I don’t get why my comment is so disliked, I don’t feel I said anything controversial, I’m basically just saying that modern day work is slavery.
Us people: criminals shouldn’t be allowed to vote!
Then proceed to vote for and elect a criminal.
Then they do it again. Just because.More fun facts, slavery is still legal in the USA (for prisoners) and the USA imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other country. The ruling class just makes everything illegal and enjoys unlimited slave labor!
More non violent prisoners behind bars than any country to ever exist!
An imprisoned felon has no voice, but a free felon can be president.
A lot of world leaders are criminals.
Indubitably.
Funny enough according to many states can’t vote. But somehow can be voted for. But I’ve been informed by my eldest sibling that I have some sort of thing they call TDS and I don’t give enough of a fuck to care about what stupidity that means.
I agree with the sentiment, but were prisoners able to vote, prisons would get gerrymandered to hell and back. That said, they should still be able to.
Yeah that just means that gerrymandering is the problem.
In Sweden, prisoners keep their home address and vote in their home district.
To be fair, Sweden’s prison system is more progressive than the non-imprisoned experience in some countries.
One of the many ways in which those in power in the US systematically enslave and disenfranchise people of color to this day.
Currently it depends on the state/district.
https://legalclarity.org/in-what-states-can-felons-vote-state-by-state-laws/
Only the District of Columbia, Maine, and Vermont allow people with felony convictions to vote at all times, including while serving time in prison
Yet another reason to move to Vermont some day
You got that backward, chief.
It’s not a coincidence.
It’s literally the point.
Lee Carter is a former Democratic Socialist member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2018–2022) who actively championed prison abolition and criminal justice reform.
Switch to Scientific Socialism. Problem solved.
Also quit letting any 2bit idiot have a say on what the country’s policies are unless they’re qualified to be in that conversation.
Also quit letting any 2bit idiot have a say on what the country’s policies are unless they’re qualified to be in that conversation.
That is such a tempting setup…
Switch to Scientific Socialism.
I was bracing for a CCP shill here tbh. Had is in the first half XD
China isn’t Scientific Socialism. Hell its not even real socialism to begin with, its just fascist-capitalism with a nice coat of socialism paint over it.
red states use prisoners as part of the census, so they can maintain the gop house seats in thier states.
Wait until you hear about countries that prevent even their non-criminals from actually voting. They usually hold an election but it’s just theatrical, your text in vote for the next pop idol is more statistically valuable.
Coming soon to a United States near you
or just straight up don’t give human rights to half the population of unwanted in their territory. then call themselves a democracy because only the right people can vote.
On the other hand, any country that allows its prisoners to vote has a constituency that wants to decriminalize what ever it was that they did.
Not to mention, that arresting is not imprisonment. Merely being arrested doesn’t put you in prison, you need to be convicted first. When cops can easily follow orders from the top to arrest people with the wrong skin colour, getting people arrested is easy. But, with a decent system of courts, it’s a lot harder to convict them.
Look, I get that the context is about political prisoners. But, really, if the system is so corrupted that people are being convicted of something merely based on their politics, it’s laughable to think that it has free and fair elections and that voting by prisoners is going to change things.
On the other hand, any country that allows its prisoners to vote has a constituency that wants to decriminalize what ever it was that they did.
What’s wrong with that?
Millions have been arrested and convicted over absurd “crimes” without a single victim to be found. Of course they want it to be decriminalized, as does their family, friends, and many fellow citizens. As it should be.
What’s wrong with that?
It depends on what they did. Maybe they want to make insulting the king legal, that might be a good thing. Maybe they want to make sex with children legal…
Maybe they want to make sex with children legal…
Maybe. But are there enough people like that to make the “having sex with children party” win the elections? If there are, I’d say we have a bigger issue, and it’s not because of people in prison.
are there enough people like that to make the “having sex with children party” win the elections?
The GOP? It seems like it.
Oh no no, they clearly want to protect children, don’t you see how hard they’re working to persecute the evil LGBT pedophiles?
On a serious note, yes there’s probably a disgusting amount of pedophiles in that party, but they’ve never campaigned on that because they know they have to keep up the facade of “the family party” and whatnot. None of them is probably even interested in legalizing it when they can just… do it and no one will prosecute them anyway.
Though yeah, I should’ve specified “legalizing sex with children party”, if it’s “just” doing it unfortunately we do have enough people that voted it (and it’s still a symptom of a bigger issue in either case).
