Pubdate: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 Source: Florida Times-Union (FL) Copyright: 2004 The Florida Times-Union Contact: http://www.times-union.com/aboutus/letters_to_editor.html Website: http://www.times-union.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/155 Author: Tonyaa Weathersbee, Times-Union columnist Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jeb+Bush Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues) HOW BUSH CAN TRULY HELP PRISONERS TURN LIFE AROUND So Gov. Jeb Bush stopped by Lawtey Correctional Institution on Christmas Eve, the place that now houses the nation's first faith-based prison. He praised the prisoners, many of whom were black, for signing up for the prison's self-improvement and religious courses - -- the stuff that is supposed to help them see their way out of the shadows of criminality and into the light of clean and lawful living. Looks like he was just messing with their heads. If Bush truly had faith that those prisoners were capable of turning their lives around, he'd stop fighting the one thing that would bring their rehabilitation full circle -- that one thing being the automatic restoration of their right to vote once they've completed their sentences. It seems that Bush isn't quite ready for something quite that radical - -- even though the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seems to be. Last month, it reversed a lower court decision and ordered a trial for Florida felons seeking to restore their civil rights. By a 2-1 vote, the appeals court partially reversed a summary judgment in favor of Bush, the Cabinet and the state's election supervisors by finding that there was evidence that the state's felony disenfranchisement law was designed to discriminate against black people and that the vestiges of that discrimination may still exist. They're right. Florida's 135-year-old felony disenfranchisement law is rooted in racism. While disenfranchisement laws in Florida constitutions devised before it became a state were primarily aimed at crimes like bribery and perjury, the 1868 felony disenfranchisement law that was enacted after Reconstruction was aimed at seeing to it that the ballot box remained off-limits to newly freed slaves. The law worked in tandem with the Black Codes, which virtually criminalized almost every behavior of the former slaves. A black person in Florida, for example, who had no job and no place to live -- a condition that was a given for the newly emancipated -- could be rounded up and forced into labor for as long as 12 months. So the law wasn't about punishing criminals. It was about keeping former slaves on society's periphery. Then came 1968, the year the felony disenfranchisement law was re- enacted. And while none of the lawmakers who amended it bragged that they were doing it to hurt black people -- as a constitutional delegate did 100 years earlier -- they didn't have to. The year 1968 was when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, racial tensions were high, and segregationist Gov. George Wallace of Alabama carried Florida in the presidential election. It was the year in which white politicians who campaigned on "law and order," platforms -- code for keeping black civil and social wrath in check -- ruled the day. So while the intent to discriminate may not have been there, the atmosphere certainly was. Things are different today, though. Today, the drug war has landed far too many people in prison for minor, non-violent offenses -- offenses that cry for rehabilitation rather than punishment -- and a disproportionate number of those ensnared in that war are black. More than 10 percent of the state's black residents who are of voting age are banned from voting because of felony convictions, while one in five black males can't vote because of a felony conviction -- even though they've fully served their sentence. Besides that, Florida is one of the last holdouts on this issue. Its insistence on keeping the law makes it one of only four remaining states to bar first-time felons from voting unless they receive clemency. The law also has no logical basis: No evidence exists to show that stripping felons of the right to vote deters them from committing further crimes. If anything, disenfranchisement serves as a barrier against true rehabilitation by keeping felons outside of the society instead of giving them a stake in it. So as the prisoners at Lawtey work to turn their lives around through adhering to the faith-based program that Bush extolled, it would be nice if he showed his faith in people like them by abandoning his battle to keep them shackled by a racist disenfranchisement law. If he can't see his way to do that, then all of his praise for them will ring hollow. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake