NCJ Number
207551
Date Published
January 2003
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the ramifications for New York's minority communities of the State law that prohibits persons with felony criminal convictions from voting.
Abstract
New York denies the right to vote to all persons who are currently incarcerated with a felony conviction and all such persons formerly incarcerated who are still serving a sentence of parole. In some cases, a court can sentence a person to incarceration and lifetime parole, effectively disenfranchising a person forever. Since drug policies and criminal justice policies operate to disproportionately incarcerate Blacks and Latinos, the net effect is to disproportionately minimize and suppress the Black and Latino vote, thus depriving a significant percentage of these populations of political power and the ability to influence government decisions that bear upon their lives and communities. Another issue that bears upon the political power of Black and Latino communities in New York City is the State's policy of relying exclusively on the Census data to determine political representation within the State. Most New York State prisons are located in rural areas, and since the Census counts everyone as residing where they slept on Census Day April first, Black and Latino inmates are counted as residents of the rural communities where they are incarcerated. This increases the political representation of New York State's rural communities (although a sizable proportion of their residents [inmates] cannot vote) while simultaneously decreasing the political representation of the minority urban communities depleted in number by the disproportionate removal of their residents (inmates) to rural prisons. 5 references