Felon disenfranchisement victory in Washington State

July 28, 2003

On July 25, the 9th Circuit reversed a lower court in Farrakhan v Washington which had held that the disproportionate disenfranchisement of minorities via prisoner disenfranchisement was not a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The lower court said that even if minorities were disproportionately imprisoned, that did not prove that disenfranchising prisoners was racial discrimination. The 9th Circuit held that the Voting Rights Act requires a broader "totality of the circumstances" analysis.

The 9th Circuit sent the case back to the lower court with the instruction that a:

Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] "totality of the circumstances" inquiry requires courts to consider how a challenged voting practice interacts with external factors such as "social and historical conditions" to result in denial of the right to vote on account of race or color. Because a Section 2 analysis clearly requires that we consider factors external to the challenged voting mechanism itself, we hold that evidence of discrimination within the criminal justice system can be relevant to a Section 2 analysis. In light of the district courtis having improperly disregarded this evidence, combined with its assessment that Plaintiffs' evidence of discrimination in Washingtonis criminal justice system was "compelling," we reverse and remand for further proceedings. (Internal citations omitted)

Read the opinion: FARRAKHAN v. STATE OF WASHINGTON

Turned Out:
Sexual Assault Behind Bars

July 17, 2003

New documentary: Turned Out: Sexual Assault Behind Bars

Of the over two million Americans in jail today, one out of five inmates will be sexually assaulted during their incarceration. Most of those who will be "turned out," or sodomized, and turned into sexual slaves, will be nonviolent drug offenders who have doubled the prison population over the last decade. This video is a shocking but insightful expose of the taboo subject of homosexual rape and homosexual relations in prison. It features frank and often graphic interviews with inmates at correctional facilities throughout the U.S., in which they explain the sexual hierarchy of "iboys" or "sissies," who play the female role to more powerful inmates known as "men," with the latter often developing relationships with several "boys" and thus developing "families," which provide sex, companionship and protection for more vulnerable inmates. Prisoners also discuss the underground economy, the sociology of power and lust, and the sexual exploitation of inmates by prison guards, while interviews with a prison warden and family members of inmates reveal the general awareness of sexual assault within our prison system and the culture of silence which enables its perpetuation.

It's expensive ($295 to buy, $95 to rent), but we don't know of anything that comes even close to this on this topic.

Prisoners of the Census website

July 6, 2003

Check out the new website about the impact of the Census Bureau's practice of counting urban prisoners as if they were residents of rural prison towns. The website has articles, an extensive bibliography and powerful maps showing how the our society and our very democracy are being skewed by this unintentional statistical quirk.

PrisonersoftheCensus.org

How the U.S. compares to other nations on the use of incarceration

July 6, 2003

On June 20, Marc Mauer, Assistant Director of the Sentencing Project, presented testimony [PDF] on Comparative International Rates of Incarceration to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The analysis documents that the U.S. incarcerates its citizens at a rate 5-8 times that of other industrialized nations, with dramatic racial disparities as well. In analyzing the causes of these developments, he finds that differences in crime rates explain only a portion of the gap in incarceration, and that changes in sentencing policy over the past thirty years account for most of the disparity.