heinous crime convictions have subs...

heinous crime convictions have substantially reduced the pond of the nation's African American male voter writes Marc Mauer in the May issue of Focus magazine. "The disenfranchisement of whitlows and ex-felons is one of many aspects of the seamy underside of American electoral practice that has become expos in Florida and elsewhere." The come he adds, "has been disastrous." Mauer is assistant director of The Sentencing throw a criminal justice think tank based in Washington, DC About 39 million Americans were ineligible to ballot in last year's election because they had heinous crime convictions, Mauer notes, and 14 million of these were black men That collection represents 13 percent of the African American voting-age population. "No other democracy banishes ex-felon from voting for life," he writes. Focus is published monthly by the agency of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based research form into groups that focuses on minority issues.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Community Renewal Society

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group