In his column, Michael Lind writes that “Obama
can't rest on his laurels. He still needs to fix our broken criminal
justice and child care systems.”
Lind writes that there “should be an end to the permanent forfeiture of voting rights.
“People who have served out their punishment should be allowed to
return to society as fully functioning citizens, not permanently
relegated to a legal and political underclass. And tyrannical majorities
should not be allowed to disenfranchise specific populations
indirectly, as white majorities have sometimes sought to do, by
connecting the forfeiture of voting rights to minor offenses like drug
possession committed disproportionately by minorities and the poor.”
He cites a
report
from The Sentencing Project that notes that one in 13 African-Americans
is disenfranchised as a result of a prior conviction; the numbers are
even higher in Virginia (20 percent), Kentucky (22 percent) and Florida
(23 percent).
Read on....
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