Sheryl WeikalOne thing I'm seeing proposed more and more as a prophylaxis against another Trump is to ban felons from holding public office.
And this might be an unpopular opinion, but I *hate* that plan.
Here's why.
First, I think people underestimate how many so-called felons we have in this country. The total population of people with a felony conviction in the US is larger than the population of Wisconsin. That's literally millions of people.
But here's the thing about those folks: MOST OF THEM ARE GOOD PEOPLE. I know it's easy to ask how that's possible, but here's the thing: we have the largest prison population in the world, and the largest jail population in the world, and the largest population of felons in the world.
Most of them are felons either because of the war on drugs, or because we have criminalized poverty, or because they were overcharged as a result of being Black. I'm representing people charged with felonies for protesting ICE or genocide PEACEFULLY. Those are the people you WANT in public office.
And it's also easy to say - and absolutely wrong - that if people are convicted it means they're guilty. Many people have no choice but to plead guilty to a felony to avoid a lengthy trial or prison sentence, even when they're innocent.
By contrast, most people who you DON'T want in public office - white collar criminals and sex pests - rarely if ever are charged with felonies, let alone convicted. And that's the thing: copaganda like Law and Order SVU will have you believe most felons are sexual predators.
But most felons in this country simply were convicted of too many crimes of poverty or possessing too much of a controlled substance. I had a client charged with an aggravated felony because he was a repeat offender. His crime? Stealing rotisserie chickens from a grocery store to eat,
because he couldn't get a job, because he kept getting convicted of stealing food and going to jail.
So every time I hear "ban felons from public office," I see the school to prison pipeline and the exact kind of thinking and structural racism that created Trump in the first place.
Andrew C. Dingman@theleftistlawyer Even before I understood any of the structural reasons why good people end up with felony records, taking away the right to participate in politics seemed like a bad idea. If we believe in creating a more perfect union by democratic debate and discussion, shouldn't we want to hear from the people it's currently working less well for? And wouldn't that clearly include the people who can't manage to obey the current rules?