Michele asks a question about parolees and probies getting a chance to vote: Let’s open this up to debate. Do you think felons who have left the prison system should have their right to vote reinstated? Let’s take it even further; some states allow prisoners to vote. Are you for this or against it?

I posted this in her comments:

It goes against most gut feelings to return a formerly convicted felon the rights and privileges of free men, but when they get out of prison, it is in the spirit of the law’s intent that the punitive part of their imprisonment is over: that they have paid their debt to society in terms of the freedom they have lost.

Should these voting rights be given to people on parole or probation? It boils down to the intent of what parole and probation are. If parole is a continuation of a sentence outside of prison, a benefit given by proving that the rehabilitative part of their sentence has been carried out, then by intents of law they are “rehabilitated.” Why not let them vote? As for probation, well, same thing goes: why not?

Is it because they are “bad people,” never to gain any redemption at all after they have served their sentences? In this light the law would and should be more understanding of itself than some ideas of justice.

This goes without saying that convicted felons that are currently serving incarceration sentences should not vote. They are still in the process of “paying their debts to society” in terms of lost freedoms. If anyone misconstrues me as being tongue-in-cheek about the “debt to society” statement, just a small disclaimer here. If a judge decides that a person’s sentence is a year of prison, after that year that person goes out with a slightly less than clean, but nonetheless clean slate. He has paid his debt to society, and hopefully during that year he has gone through enough so that he could be reintegrated into society.

I personally believe the law limits how society’s vindictiveness can be carried out, which I also believe is a good thing.