Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. By Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 384. $29.95 cloth.

Abstract

Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. By Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 384. $29.95 cloth. Add mass disenfranchisement of felons to the list of penal outcomes that distinguishes contemporary U.S. penality from other developed nations. Within this context of American penal severity, and especially the growing literature on collateral or invisible consequences of contemporary penal policy, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy examines the practice of excluding persons from the polls on the basis of a felony conviction-a practice that other developed nations have shed, much like capital punishment. What rationales justify felon disenfranchisement? Who is disenfranchised, and with what measurable effects? How and how much does race matter? Overall, the book supplies rich empirical assessments of the scope and impact of felon disenfranchisement that ultimately challenge the normative bases upon which the United States continues the practice. The book begins by problematizing disenfranchisement within a modern democratic polity. Customary rationales premised on the inability of felons to vote responsibly, for example, stressing the general unfitness of criminal minds or the potential power of felon voting blocs (such as the fear that felons will vote for excessively lenient penal policies), do not survive the basic principle that how one votes never provides a legitimate basis for determining whether one may vote. In a particularly interesting section on re-enfranchisement opportunities, the authors lament a troubling example of fitness tests found in the reliance upon, in some re-enfranchisement proceedings, evidence of improved character, such as sobriety, anger management, or job stability-qualities never required of the general population. Even more troubling is that some proceedings require payment of outstanding legal debts before restoration, also not a general requirement and that imposes a kind of poll tax on felons. Nor does disenfranchisement seem to achieve any standard penal objectives. It certainly fails to rehabilitate or incapacitate, and its blanket application likely conflicts with demands for graduated sanctions by deterrence and retribution. Later, in Chapter Five, the authors test the hypothesis that voting may actually reduce recidivism by fostering community and civic ties (the civic re-integration hypothesis). While the authors identify a basic correlation between voting and criminal behavior (first-time and re-offending), voting falls below statistical significance when they control for demographic factors. The authors turn to history and race in Chapters Two through Four, assuming the related tasks tracing race to the passage of early disenfranchisement laws and estimating the size and makeup of the currently disenfranchised population. While disenfranchisement laws typically accompanied statehood outside of the South, functioning as property requirements to exclude undesirable whites, it only overtook the former slave states immediately after the Civil War. Still, African Americans are currently disenfranchised at shockingly high rates throughout the country. The authors conservatively estimate the current disenfranchised population at 5. …