By Cara L. C. Hunter, Fergus McNeill, Milena Tripkovic

This article explores both the reasons for, and the potential impact of, the current level of disenfranchisement in Scotland. First, we scrutinise Scottish legal provisions for their compatibility with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)’s jurisprudence, which require disenfranchisement's aims to be clarified and delimited. Second, we examine where disenfranchisement sits within the wider context of Scottish penal values, and what principles underlie its imposition. Finally, we turn to a discussion of whether and how dis/enfranchisement aligns with the Scottish Government's commitments to the rehabilitation and reintegration of people who have been in prison, and to related empirical evidence about desistance from crime. The limited enfranchisement of prisoners established by the Scottish Government in 2020 avoided these core questions and this article aims to help address this neglect and to open up dialogue on these issues.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2023.\

By Nicole D. Porter and Morgan McLeod

Voting eligibility and a person’s involvement in the criminal legal system have a historical but unnatural association in the United States. Some state laws dating back over 100 years, and motivated by racist ideology, permanently ban people convicted of a felony from voting, and almost all states have long prevented voting by people in prison. Over the last 50 years the country’s investment in mass incarceration not only staggeringly increased the prison population and the community of people with a criminal record but increased the number of people banned from voting due to a felony conviction. As a result, over 4.6 million Americans with a felony conviction were disenfranchised as of 2022, disproportionately impacting Black and Latinx residents. Despite the stark consequences of mass incarceration and voter disenfranchisement, the advocacy of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated activists, organizers, legislative champions, and others have successfully fought to pass reforms to expand voting rights to justice-impacted individuals. These changes, both administrative and statutory in recent decades, coupled by recent modest declines in the population of incarcerated people and those under community supervision reduced the total number of people disenfranchised by 24% since reaching its peak in 2016. OVERVIEW Understanding the origins of this progress to restore voting rights is beneficial for democracy and justice. This report provides a state-by-state accounting of the changes to voting rights for people with felony convictions and measures its impact.5 Since 1997, 26 states and the District of Columbia have expanded voting rights to people living with felony convictions or amended policies to guarantee ballot access. These reforms were achieved through various mechanisms, including legislative reform, executive action, and ballot measures. The reforms include: • restoration of voting rights to persons in prison in Washington, DC; • expansion of voting rights to some or all persons on felony probation or parole in 12 states; and • increased accessibility for persons seeking rights restoration in 14 states. Over 2 million Americans have regained the right to vote since 1997. These changes to expand and guarantee voting rights demonstrate national momentum to reform the nation’s restrictive and racially discriminatory voting laws.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 28p.

By Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen

5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adults-- are denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--both for election outcomes, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 384p.