Combating misinformation in the ex-felon population

Introduction

As compared to European nations, the United States (US) maintains restrictive criminal offender disenfranchisement laws. The practice of banning criminal offenders from voting while incarcerated is not limited to the US; however, the practice of barring ex-felony offenders from voting post-incarceration is a practice unique to the US. To further illustrate this policy contrast, while the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that a blanket ban on voting from prison violates the European Convention on Human Rights (Hirst v. United Kingdom No.2 2005) all but two US states maintain a complete ban on felon voting from prison and most US states ban ex-felons from voting even after they have been released from jail or prison. The US is exceptional in that it maintains both the highest incarceration rate (Walmsley, 2014) and the largest population of individuals disenfranchised in the world (Uggen et al., 2012).

US state constitutions upon ratification contained provisions excluding the right of suffrage from those who committed ‘infamous crimes’. Since the US Supreme Court ruled in Green v. US (1958) an ‘infamous crime’ has been defined as any crime that results in a sentence of one year or more. The Green ruling lead US states to recognize all felony offenses as ‘infamous crimes’. Although felon disenfranchisement laws exist in most US states, many have been modified to allow ex-felons to regain the right to vote after they have completed all aspects of their criminal sentence, including parole and probation. Forty-eight states prohibit offenders who are incarcerated from voting, 31 states prohibit voting for parolees and probationers, seven states maintain disenfranchisement laws for ex-felons after incarceration but allow ex-felons to apply for restoration of voting rights, and four deny ex-felons from voting even after they have completed all aspects of their sentence (The Sentencing Project, 2014).

Though felon disenfranchisement laws have existed for centuries, offender exclusion legislation passed by Congress has further stigmatized ex-felons in the US The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), signed by President Clinton, bans drug felons from receiving welfare benefits, including food stamps, though states are able to opt out of this requirement. Beyond being excluded from voting and receiving welfare benefits, state and federal laws also exclude ex-felons from owning a gun, possessing ammunition, serving on juries, and serving in the US military (Boucai, 2007; Kalt, 2003). These exclusionary laws, like felon disenfranchisement laws, send a strong message to ex-felons that they are excluded from society and no longer maintain the rights and benefits of citizenship.

Although some ex-felons in the US are prohibited from voting due to felon disenfranchisement laws, millions of other ex-felons remain eligible to vote but fail to do so (Burch 2007, 2011; Haselswerdt, 2009; Hjalmarsson and Lopez, 2010; Weaver and Lerman, 2010). Scholarship has highlighted negative interactions with law enforcement agents (Weaver and Lerman, 2010), and detrimental effects of incarceration as factors negatively impacting ex-offender political participation (Lerman, 2013). The pressure to conform, and the minimization of individuality that occurs in prison may explain why imprisonment tends to create apathetic non-voters, as opposed to active citizens that choose to exercise their political voice (Behan, 2014).

An alternative explanation, yet to be explored, is that misinformation held by ex-felony offenders also negatively impacts civic engagement post-incarceration. In this article, I pose the following research questions: how do ex-felony offenders in the US interpret their right to vote after completing their sentences? And, what role does misinformation play in ex-felon civic reintegration? After conducting months of participant observation and semi-structured interviews with recently released ex-felony offenders, I argue that misinformation stemming from a history of felon exclusion in the US causes many ex-felons to fail to participate in civic activities such as voting. I additionally argue that parole and probation agencies are uniquely positioned to dispel common myths held by ex-felons about felon exclusion laws. I suggest that by providing accurate, accessible information to ex-felons regarding their civil rights, parole and probation officials can help facilitate the social reintegration process.

Collateral consequences

When a defendant is accused of a crime and found guilty by a judge or jury, the defendant is issued a sentence as punishment for the crime. The sentence may take various forms but always involves some form of punishment, which may vary from a small fine to imprisonment. These types of punishments are a direct consequence of violating criminal law. Punishment for felony offenders in the U.S, however, does not cease after they have served their sentence. Felony offenders then suffer from collateral consequences. Collateral consequences are not criminal punishments, rather they are civil punishments that ex-felony offenders face after they serve their criminal sentence (Pinard, 2006).

Upon entering a plea, defendants are often unaware of the collateral consequences that accompany a felony conviction. Alexander (2012) has found that overworked public defenders rarely inform defendants of collateral consequences they may encounter post-conviction. Further, judges are not required to inform defendants of post-conviction collateral consequences; judges are only required to inform defendants of the direct consequences they face as a result of violating the criminal law (Chin, 2012). Inmates interviewed as part of this research project indicated that they learned about collateral consequences while they were incarcerated from acquaintances that provided them with inaccurate information. Other scholarship has indicated probation and parole officers as common sources of misinformation for ex-offenders seeking an understanding of their post-conviction rights (Allen, 2011; Ewald, 2005).

Contact with the criminal justice system, civic engagement and crime

Research by social scientists has showed that when ex-felons are released from custody and retain their voting rights, they rarely exercise them. This even holds true for ex-felons that prior to their conviction consistently voted (Burch 2007, 2011; Haselswerdt, 2009). Haselswerdt (2009) observed rates of registration and voter turnout in both general and closed primary elections for a cohort of 660 ex-felons released from parole in Erie County New York in 2004. Haselswerdt observed that while prior to their conviction approximately 36 per cent of this cohort was registered to vote, post conviction only 13 per cent had reregistered to vote in either 2004 or 2005 and only 5 per cent of this cohort voted in either election. After matching data on millions of convicted offenders to voter registration records and turnout, Burch (2007, 2011) found that fewer than 10 per cent of individuals convicted of a crime and still serving some part of their sentence voted in the 2004 general election. In 2008, even with minority voter turnout peaking and overall voter turnout reaching a level it had not reached in 40 years, Burch found that ex-felon voter turnout was just 22 per cent which was much lower than the overall voter turnout rate in the US for that same year of 61.6 per cent (Burch, 2011).

The negative impact of contact with the criminal justice system on civic engagement is not limited to the activity of voting. Weaver and Lerman’s (2010) study indicated that individuals who have frequent contact with the criminal justice system are less likely to trust government, vote and participate in community groups. They conclude that punitive interactions with law enforcement agents cause ex-offenders to develop negative orientations towards government, which translates into ex-offenders demonstrating depressed levels of civic engagement.

Empirical research also demonstrates that a link exists between civic engagement and crime. Uggen and Manza’s (2004) examination of longitudinal survey data derived from the Youth Development Study shows that a robust negative relationship exists between voting and subsequent criminal behavior even when controlling for variables such as race, marital status, education, employment and prior criminal behavior. Emerging research on desistance from crime provides evidence that civic engagement is a vital component of the community reintegration process. Farrall et al.’s (2014) qualitative longitudinal study reveals that individuals that desist from crime are significantly more likely to vote and demonstrate active community involvement. Farrall et al. (2014) argue that active citizenship is a result of social inclusion and that criminal disenfranchisement is at odds with government’s often stated goal of ex-offender rehabilitation.

Research method

The Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies provided me with a research fellowship that afforded me the opportunity to engage in months of qualitative research at a California Day Reporting Center (DRC). The DRC I conducted field work at provides courses to ex-felony offenders focusing on general education, employment readiness training and cognitive behavioral therapy. This research project was conducted in two phases. First, I engaged in months of participant observation at the DRC to develop a rapport with participants and to better understand the barriers ex-offenders face during the re-entry process. During participant observation I carried on conversations with participants during breaks, ate lunch with them and participated in rehabilitative classes with them. Once I had developed a rapport with participants, I began the second phase of my research design which involved conducting semi-structured interviews. I recruited volunteers to participate in interviews during the last five minutes of classes offered at the DRC. An announcement was made asking participants if they would like to participate in interviews to help generate knowledge about the ex-felon civic reintegration process. Participants were not offered incentives to encourage participation, though some participants were allowed to be absent from their next class during the duration of the interview. Written consent to participate in the study was obtained from all interview participants prior to beginning each interview. Prior to arriving at the DRC as an outside researcher, I had no prior involvement with any DRC employees or participants attending the DRC.

In total, I conducted 36 semi structured interviews with ex-felony offenders who had been released from prison or jail within one year. Offenders were sampled using the strategy of purposive sampling (Flick, 2009). For interviews, I selected offenders representing typical cases (Patton, 2002). In this context, typical cases can be defined as offenders with varying backgrounds but that are equally likely to demonstrate either knowledge, or a lack of knowledge of their rights. In an effort to obtain typical cases, the days of the week that participants were recruited for interviews at the DRC rotated weekly. Since course offerings at the DRC are scheduled for specific days, this recruitment strategy ensured that offenders enrolled in different courses, as a result of having differing needs, were given an equal opportunity to participate in the interviews. All interview respondents in the sample had been convicted of at least one felony offense, with most respondents having been convicted of multiple felonies.

Offenders attending the DRC had a variety of past convictions, ranging from driving under the influence to second degree murder. As a result, the amount of time respondents in the sample had spent incarcerated varied, with some offenders serving as little as four months in confinement while others had served over 40 years. All ex-felons included in this sample were to have their voting rights automatically restored prior to the November 4th 2014 midterm elections, which included the race for California Governor. Interviews with ex-felons varied in length from 11 minutes to 39 minutes, with most interviews lasting approximately 25 minutes.

The interview instrument used for this study contained 14 questions. Interviews began with general questions about ex-offender experiences at the DRC, before proceeding to questions specifically related to their knowledge of rights post-conviction. Each respondent was asked two questions, one to assess their knowledge of ex-felon voting rights in the state of California and the second question to evaluate their desire to participate in future elections. Respondents were asked ‘Do you plan to participate in the November 2014 midterm elections, which includes California’s Governor’s race?’ Respondents were then asked ‘What is your current understanding of how your felony conviction impacts your ability to vote?’ After respondents answered both questions, the ex-felons interviewed were informed that they would be eligible to vote in future elections. After being informed that their right to vote would be restored, participants were then asked probing follow-up questions to assess if providing them with accurate information regarding their voting rights influenced their likelihood of voting in future elections. All of the quotes provided in the remaining sections of this article were derived from the responses given by ex-felony offenders during interviews as recorded in the verbatim interview transcripts. Pseudonyms are used to identify the speaker and to protect the anonymity of respondents that participated in this study.

Interview findings

Participant responses to the interview questions were subsequently coded and categorized (see Table 1). Ex-felons that expressed a desire to participate in future elections were categorized as interested, while those who did not express a desire to participate in future elections were categorized as uninterested. Ex-felons who were able to explain how their felony conviction impacted their ability to vote were categorized as understands their right to vote and ex-felons unable to explain how their voting rights had been impacted by their felony conviction, or that incorrectly explained how their voting rights had been impacted, were categorized as misunderstood their right to vote. Based on ex-offender’s responses to the questions of interest a typology was created that captures all possible combinations of responses given by participants. Within the typology, the raw number of respondents who were placed into each category is listed along with the percentage of total respondents that were placed into each respective category.

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Table 1.

Typology of ex-felons desire to vote by knowledge of voting laws.

	Interested	Uninterested
Understands	Ex-felon understands California’s election laws pertaining to felon disenfranchisement and expresses a desire to participate in upcoming elections (8, 23%).	Ex-felon understands his/her voting rights, but is unlikely to participate in upcoming elections because of a lack of expressed desire (2, 6%).
Misunderstood	Ex-felon falsely believed that he/she is banned from voting permanently, though they expressed an interest in politics and voting (12, 34%).	Ex-felon misunderstands their voting rights but did not express a desire to participate in future elections (12, 34%).

A substantial majority of respondents misunderstood how their voting rights had been impacted by their felony conviction. Just over 68 per cent of offenders in this sample failed to demonstrate an accurate understanding of how their voting rights had been impacted by their felony conviction. Half of the respondents in the sample, that misunderstood their voting rights, expressed an interest in voting in future elections while the other half was uninterested in voting in future elections. Less than a one-third of the sample accurately understood how their felony conviction impacted their ability to vote. Of those who understood their voting rights, most planned on voting in future elections. Only 6 per cent of the sample that understood they were eligible to vote in future elections indicated they would likely abstain from voting in the future.

Misunderstood and uninterested

Respondents placed into the misunderstood and uninterested category expressed similar sentiments when asked about their level of interest in future voting. Ex-felons commonly stated that factors stemming from their convictions created more immediate concerns for them, that trumped concerns related to politics or world affairs. Respondents often described returning to extremely impoverished environments after they completed their sentence. Offenders indicated that their primary concerns were survival and reuniting with family. Ex-felony offenders frequently expressed feelings of alienation from society and indicated that it was difficult to complete basic tasks in public. This was especially common for offenders who had served long prison sentences. Raymond, a former L.A. Crip gang member who had spent over two decades incarcerated explained:

With family it is pretty easy to get reintegrated. We’ve always been close…. But I was gone for a long time, maybe 21 years. As far as going out in the public, I really don’t - I don’t go out much, it’s still difficult to get used to people. I feel like I am weird or awkward or something and sometimes I wonder, like what the hell is going on here?

Misunderstood and interested

Offenders in the misunderstood and interested category expressed a desire to participate in elections, but falsely believed they were permanently disenfranchised. When ex-offenders in this category were asked if they knew how their felony conviction impacted their voting rights, respondents asserted that they could not vote. A respondent named Rico replied:

Yeah, I understand… If you’re a felon they take away your rights….

Several other respondents had never voted before, either because they were incarcerated or because they assumed their felony status excluded them from voting. Although these respondents had not voted in the past, they expressed a desire to participate in future elections. Sandra, a married mother of two who had struggled with drug addiction throughout her life, stated:

I have never voted before, because I have always been a convict… nope, nope, never voted, but I would like to… I understand that if you’re a felon you can’t vote.

Understood and interested

Ex-felony offenders placed in the understood and interested category accurately articulated how their voting rights had been impacted by their felony conviction and expressed a desire to participate in future elections. Offenders in this category described prior involvement in a variety of political activities including voting. Josh, a respondent who was pursuing his GED at the time of the interview stated:

Yeah, I have voted…The last time I voted… I voted for Prop 215 (legalizing medical marijuana)… I have voted for a lot of different things in the past.

Of participants in this study, very few indicated that they were able to utilize technology such as the internet as a tool to inquire about rights they retain post-conviction. Instead it was far more common for offenders to embarrassingly indicate that they lacked basic computer skills that would allow them to find information online. This finding is consistent with Amodeo et al. (2009) who estimated that 75 per cent of prisoners preparing for release in California have never used a computer.

Understood and uninterested

Respondents rarely demonstrated an understanding of their voting rights while at the same time displaying a lack of interest in voting. Respondents placed in this category expressed distrust or contempt for politicians, though interestingly, they demonstrated considerable levels of political knowledge. Richard, a former felony offender who had convictions for theft and possession of methamphetamine expressed contempt for the US electoral process and cited his disapproval of the process as his primary reason for not voting:

I have the opportunity to be a registered voter, I know but I choose not to be. Because I know my vote doesn’t really count…I mean Gore, Gore should have been our president… The only thing about Gore is that he knew that it was not worth it to pursue it, because he would have been hurt if he pursued that… You know the constitution is so wrong… We should have a popular vote in this country… Instead of the Electoral College… The Electoral College made sense two hundred years ago, when we had horse and buggy but we have the media and everyone is very capable now… So I believe we have the wrong process of voting and it’s unfair… It’s really not democratic… So I am not even interested in voting, because at this point it doesn’t matter.

Beyond voting

In addition to misperceiving voting rights, respondents also indicated that they held many misconceptions about what public assistance benefits they remained eligible for post-conviction. Though PRWORA bans drug felons from receiving public assistance benefits, California is one of 19 states that modified the ban on food stamp eligibility. California allows ex-drug felons to receive food stamps if they meet the general requirements and have completed a state recognized drug treatment program (Burks, 2013). At the DRC, a department of social services representative is contracted by the county to explain to participants what eligibility requirements they must meet in order to receive benefits. When eligible ex-felons I spoke with learned from DRC staff that they were eligible for public assistance benefits such as food stamps and Medi-Cal⁽²⁾ even with felony convictions, respondents expressed surprise. Respondents indicated that in the past, they had never applied for benefits because they believed their status as a felon disqualified them. Alex, an ex-felon who had never received public assistance benefits before learning about them at the DRC indicated:

I mean that is always my first thought, you know… Like having a felony stops everything, a lot of things anyway. But um, yeah I didn’t know that I was eligible for benefits in the past and this time around I am really trying to take advantage of opportunities for help, you know what I mean… Before I didn’t know, and now that I know and I was able to get both these things (food stamps and Medi-Cal) it really does help me… Because I never know what is going to happen to me next.

Policy conclusions

In this article I do not develop a normative argument addressing the democratic legitimacy of the practice of felon disenfranchisement. Instead, I argue that civic reintegration is a valuable component of the offender re-entry process. Although existing literature indicates that correctional officers have served as sources of misinformation for some ex-offenders (Allen, 2011; Ewald, 2005), they are uniquely positioned as agents of the state, to convey correct information regarding post-conviction rights to ex-felons prior to release. Informing ex-felons of their post-conviction rights is consistent with the rehabilitative mission of correctional departments. As a large body of criminological research indicates, in order for-ex offenders to desist from criminal activity, they must engage in pro-social post-release activities that assist them socially and mentally (O’Brien, 2001; Petersilia, 2003; Rose and Clear, 2003; Shapiro and Schwartz, 2001; Travis and Petersilia, 2001). Voting exists as an inclusive pro-social activity that may allow ex-felons to strengthen bonds with the state and civil society. For ex-felons to exercise the right to vote, however, they must first understand the voting rights restoration process, which in the US is often complex and varies by state.

To help facilitate rehabilitation and social reintegration, probation and parole agencies should provide instruction to ex-offenders containing a civic re-education component. Civic re-education, I recognize as, providing accessible information to ex-offenders regarding rights they retain, rights that can be restored, and the routes through which they can re-engage civil society. This information should be presented verbally to ex-offenders so that low levels of literacy common amongst ex-offenders does not prevent them from retaining the information.

Too often, information provided to ex-felons post-release only pertains to how they can access material benefits that may or may not be provided to them by the state. Public assistance benefits may aid offenders during re-entry, but receiving material benefits does nothing to reintegrate ex-felons back into civil society. Providing ex-felons with information regarding the civil rights restoration process after they have been released from custody will facilitate civic reintegration, while at the same time increasing levels of political efficacy. Providing information to ex-felons about the civil rights restoration process will show ex-felons that they are not merely subjects of the state, but rather they have the power, through their vote, to promote change in society.