Last month, the Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch released a report on the devastating effects of felony disenfranchisement laws. These laws, which vary from state to state, preclude convicted felons from voting.
Some felons can never vote, others can’t vote as long as they are on probation or parole, and others can’t vote while they are imprisoned. Many of the report’s findings are staggering, including that 13 percent of all black men are presently disenfranchised, and if current incarceration rates continue, 30 percent of the next generation of black men will be disenfranchised.
In several Southern states, including Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Virginia, these laws permanently deprive between a fourth and a third of all black men of the right to vote.
In many ways, the report actually understates the impact of these laws on the next generation of poor, primarily minority children who are now or will soon be coming into contact with our justice system. The trend to “criminalize” our juvenile justice systems, most notably the near-universal trend in the states to make it easier to transfer children to adult court, will have the practical effect of disenfranchising hundreds of thousands more adults for acts they committed as children.
Between 1992 and 1995, 41 states passed laws making it easier to transfer children to adult court. These states lowered the age at which juveniles can be transferred, expanded the list of transferable crimes and changed the transfer decision-making process, typically by taking discretion from judges and giving it to prosecutors. Twenty six states have no bottom age limit for transferring children charged with certain crimes. If convicted in adult court, these children receive permanent felony convictions on their records. In 10 states, including five Southern states, absent a pardon from the governor, this will be bar them from voting for life–even if they never served a day of jail time.
This combination of felony disenfranchisement and transfer laws leads to the absurd result of depriving persons of a fundamental right of citizenship–in some cases for life–even before they have reached the age when they can exercise the right to vote. In fact, in the majority of our states, adults may be deprived of this right for acts they engaged in before reaching the age of reason.
At least two factors act to multiply the number of adults who are disenfranchised for crimes committed as youths. First, many more crimes are treated as “felonies” than ever before, including schoolyard fights, possessing small amounts of drugs and innocuous adolescent sexual encounters. Second, juveniles, unlike adults, commit crimes in groups.
Within each group, there’s the unknowing tag-along, the more informed wanna-be and the all-knowing perpetrator. Typically, these children are all charged with the same crime under broad state “accountability” laws and tried as adults.
Two other trends work together to expand the duration of this disenfranchisement. In most states, juveniles convicted in adult court must be given the same long mandatory minimum sentences as adults.
“Truth-in sentencing” provisions require that they serve between 85 and 100 percent of their sentences for many crimes. Together, these provisions prevent judges from considering youth as a mitigating factor in sentencing and prevent parole boards from reducing time served after sentencing. The net result is that even in those states which only prevent prisoners from voting, like Illinois, there are many adults who can’t vote for a long time.
Finally, trends in juvenile court further multiply the numbers of disenfranchised felons. Many state juvenile codes now incorporate the adult lexicon of “felonies” and “convictions” instead of the less stigmatic terms historically used to describe juvenile delinquency. In many states, juvenile court judges now have the power to impose long incarcerative sentences on juveniles convicted of felonies. These juvenile court “felony convictions” may also be a bar to voting.
It’s hard to tell just how many adults can’t vote as a result of acts they committed as children because the data on numbers of children tried as adults is sketchy and because the full effects of these laws are just beginning to be felt. But the Justice Department’s figures suggest conservatively that at least 200,000 youths under 18 are tried each year as adults. And this figure is based on data from 1994, which was before the tidal wave of transfer laws had crested.
The upcoming centennial of the juvenile court provides a compelling reason for researching more fully the combined effect of felony disenfranchisement laws and the laws “adultifying” juvenile delinquency.
Jane Addams, the Chicago crusader who played key roles in both the juvenile court and women’s suffrage movements, must be turning over in her grave at the thought that so many men and women are being deprived of their right to vote for acts they committed as children.
