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Keeping the niggers down

Jeb Bush has been fighting civil rights groups who are attempting to overturn an archaic racist law that bans felons in Florida who have paid their debt to society from voting.

A federal appeals court Friday ordered a trial in a lawsuit that claims Florida's law barring felons from voting is unconstitutional because it discriminates against blacks.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, reversing a lower court ruling dismissing the case, decided there are enough relevant facts for the case to go to trial.

"Our clients are going to get a full hearing on the evidence in court," said attorney Jessie Allen, who represented the plaintiffs. "We're just thrilled."

Civil right groups argue that the law violates equal protection and voting rights claims.

Roughly 600,000 Floridians are banned from voting because of felony convictions, according to the Florida Equal Rights Voting Project. A disproportionate number of them more than a third are black, according to American Civil Liberties Union estimates.
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Plaintiff's attorneys argued in the appeal that the law was enacted in the 19th century to discriminate against blacks, and the 1968 constitution adopted the old law and its intent to discriminate.

The defendants including Bush and former Secretary of State Katherine Harris argued that any discriminatory intent was eliminated when the law was re-enacted.

The Miami Herald has more:

A federal appellate court ruled Friday that Florida's 135-year-old ban on ex-felons' voting rights could be racially discriminatory, and ordered a Miami trial for hundreds of thousands of former convicts seeking to restore those rights.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the state must prove the 1968 Legislature did not discriminate against blacks when it slightly amended a post-Civil War law barring ex-felons from voting.

''This is a fantastic win for a huge number of people,'' said attorney Jessie Allen, of the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, which brought the class-action lawsuit on behalf of roughly 613,000 former felons. ``It's a great day for democracy in Florida.''
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The decision marked a stunning turning point in the class-action case, which was filed weeks before Florida's divisive 2000 presidential election ended with George W. Bush winning the state -- and the White House -- by only 537 votes over Al Gore.

''The mass disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Florida citizens is the overriding civil-rights crisis in our state, and we look to the courts to end this shameful injustice,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida ACLU, which has lobbied for the ex-felons' voting rights.
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Florida requires ex-felons to apply to the state Clemency Board to have their voting privileges restored. The board, however, faces a tremendous backlog.

Four other states also ban ex-convicts from going to the polls -- Iowa, Virginia, Mississippi and Kentucky. In the past year, Alabama, Nevada and Wyoming have lifted their bans, allowing some ex-felons to vote again.
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Much could be riding on the outcome of the new trial, according to independent political observers. Their assumption: If the ex-felons could vote again, they might cast ballots primarily for Democratic candidates.

Regardless of the intent of the legislature back in ‘68, the application of this law results in disproportionate disenfranchisement of black males simply because they are the most likely demographic group to find themselves incarcerated. In fact, the U.S. Justice Department’s own figures show that 1/3 of all black males will do prison time sometime in their life:

Black men born in the United States in 2001 will have a one in three chance of going to prison during their lifetime if current trends continue, according to a report by the US justice department.

More than 5.6 million Americans are either in prison or have served time there - and that number will continue to rise, the report shows.

By the end of 2001 one in every 37 Americans had some experience of prison, compared with one in 53 in 1974. Continuing at that rate, the proportion will increase to one in every 15 of those born in 2001.

In 2001 a sixth of African-American men were current or former prisoners, compared with one in 13 Latinos and one in 38 whites. The incarceration of women remains lower than of men but has increased at twice the rate since 1980 and shows similar racial disparities.

"Prison had become the social policy of choice for low income people of colour," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a group which promotes reduced reliance on imprisonment. "Nobody's stated it that way but we have inner-city areas starved of investment but no shortage of funds to build and fill prisons."

Earlier this year, the prison population in our gloriously free country reached 2 million people:

For the first time in history the population of US federal, state and local prisons has surpassed two million people, consolidating the US lead over China, Russia and even Belarus in both absolute numbers of inmates and the rate of incarceration, according to new figures made public Sunday. ......

According to the report, the 50 US states along with the District of Columbia and the federal government held behind bars as many as 1 355 748 people as of June 30, 2002, while 665 475 individuals were under lock and key in municipal and local jails.

The rate of incarceration was 702 inmates per each 100 000 US residents, up from 690 at midyear 2001. This means that one in every 142 people living in the United States was in jail in the middle of last year.

The figures show the United States remains the absolute world leader in both the overall number of inmates and their ratio to the population at large.

The world's most populous country, China, whose human rights record is being constantly assailed in part for throwing people in jail for political reasons, has over 1.4 million inmates, according to the British Home Office, which monitors these statistics.

The prison population of Russia is about 920 000, these figures indicate.

As for the incarceration rate, the United States is being followed by the Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554) and Kazakhstan (522).

And who are we locking up? Non-violent drug offenders:

A well-publicized study released in 1992 revealed that a full one-quarter of African American males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four were in prison. These figures are no longer accurate — by 1998 the figure had increased to 32 percent and has continued to rise. One in three black men aged 20-29 is imprisoned, on probation, or on parole. Black men are seven times more likely than white men to be in prison. Five times as many black men are presently in prison as are in four-year colleges and universities.

Is the imprisonment of this segment of society necessary to ensure the safety of Americans? The majority of African Americans in prison are being held for non-violent offenses, often drug possession or distribution. Curiously enough, numerous studies have shown that Caucasian Americans consume far more illicit drugs than African Americans, including so-called “hard drugs.” An outdated, but relevant, study by the US Public Health Service’s Substance Abuse Group, in 1992 found that 76 percent of illicit drug users in the US were white, 14 percent were black, and 8 percent were Latino.

In 1980, about half of the people entering state prison were violent offenders; in 1995 less than a third had been convicted of a violent crime. The enormous increase in America’s inmate population can be explained in large part by the sentences given to non-violent offenders. Crimes that in other countries would usually lead to community service, fines, or drug treatment — or would not be considered crimes at all — in the United States now lead to a prison term, by far the most expensive form of punishment.
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A perception remains in America that there are not enough prisons, despite the fact that the United Sates incarcerates more people than any other country in the world (half million more than Communist China). This belief exists largely because the frequent number of violent repeat offenders who are released after only serving a fraction of their sentence due to lack of prison space. The obvious solution to this problem lies in decreasing the number of non-violent offenders that are incarcerated, something that could be accomplished by decriminalizing illegal drugs, marijuana in particular. This action would provide space for violent criminals of all races to serve their full sentences, while allowing non-violent offenders to receive treatment, counseling, or job training.

Here’s the deal: if you’re white and middle class, you buy your drugs from a “friend” who lives in your neighborhood. You consume your drugs behind the walls of your private residence, and have little or no fear of the police barging in and busting you.

If you’re poor and black, you buy your drugs from a street corner dealer, in plain sight of the rest of the world. You consume your drugs in other public or semi-public places, thus increasing your chances of a run-in with the law. And as soon as you get your first conviction, you’ll never again be able to be a participating member of our democratic society.

Drug laws are racist by nature, and are enforced disproportionately against minorities. There is no reason to lock someone up when they have hurt no one. They have not stolen anything. They have not assaulted anyone. They may or may not be harming themselves, but alcohol is far more dangerous to one’s personal health than marijuana, and it is perfectly legal. So why do we continue to lock up minorities for breaking laws that make no sense?

We're rednecks, rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
We're rednecks, we're rednecks
We're keeping the niggers down

More info at The Sentencing Project:

Nationally, more than four million Americans are denied the right to vote as a result of laws that prohibit voting by felons or ex-felons. In 48 states (with the exception of Maine and Vermont) and the District of Columbia prisoners cannot vote, in 33 states felons on probation or parole are disenfranchised, and in 12 states a felony conviction can result in a lifetime ban long after the completion of a sentence. This fundamental obstacle to participation in democratic life is exacerbated by racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resulting in an estimated 13% of black men unable to vote.