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I firmly believe that if you commit a felony and are convicted and sentenced, that you lose certain birthrights – the right to run for and hold public office of any kind, the right to vote, the right to own and bear firearms, and the right to own real property (land, house, etc) and the right to own a business. I believe that these loss of rights should be taught to our young people throughout their schooling. That way they would know what they stand to lose should they decide to enter a life of crime.
Therefore, the answer to your question is a definite and firm NO.
Well said PapaDawg. Well said.
The problem is that some things are felonies for absolutely no reason. Like drug possession. Most ridiculous felony ever. But somebody would lose all their rights for it. That's messed up.
We should all take a moment to marvel at this…Jared and PapaDawg actually seem to be agreeing…
Drug use is NOT a victimless crime. There is a definite reason narcotics are illegal to possess and use without a prescription. Anyone who supports the unfettered use of narcotics for "recreation" is doing nothing more than looking for an excuse to get high. Most medications – drugs – if not used for a specific purpose to treat a specific malady in specific doses for a specific period of time will cause irreparable/irreversible damage to other organs and/or the Human reproductive system. If you do not believe me – and those aforementioned advocates of unfettered recreational drug use will be among those who won't – just listen to the minute and a half of disclaimers after the advertisement for prescription medications. This INCLUDES "medical MJ" . . . it actually does cause more harm than good – mainly because of the "other" ingredients than its extremely weak pain killer.
However, stupid is as stupid does and stupid people just want to smoke dope . . . and that is why it is called DOPE!
Loss of voting rights might be a reasonable cost to certain felonies (though we have large numbers of ridiculous felonies), after all we can reestablish these rights though the executive branch's pardon powers. I think there's an argument that tying voting rights with all felonies encourages the state to far too broadly define what constitutes a "felony", and to avoid constraining this to people whose private interests actually diverge from what might be termed a common good (say, rapists, murders, pedophiles, etc).
But as far as PD's proposed cost, that's way too far. If a person commits a crime that is that dangerous to society that we should remove virtually ALL of their personal human rights for an indefinite period of time, then we put them in prison. We don't let them back out. If we can let them back out, and remove from them all personal rights, such as private property protections, not only would this be an absurd legal structure (essentially creating a class of slaves), but we'd also be imposing considerable costs on ourselves for little or no gain, and in fact practically guaranteeing that large numbers of felons would seek recidivism as preferred to their state of "freedom". (Some will argue that there are career criminals who would do so anyway, to which I'd argue, what makes them that way?, and one significant cause is the denial of rights such as basic economic freedoms upon their release)
I should think that we should have a criminal justice system that seeks to be able to reintroduce criminals to a free society and to ideally remove the blight of their ongoing criminal actions as a cost to us rather than makes them a permanent feature that we should be continually vigilant over. The purpose of police and justice systems is to provide incentives not to commit crimes, yes, but once a person commits such crimes, we should be asking whether our punishments are meted out appropriately and do not persist indefinitely. Putting someone in prison for a couple years and extending a probationary term after their release ought to be a sufficient deterrent without imposing additional sanctions at our cost.
Voting rights should never be revoked for any reason. If a government can make something a crime and then also make loss of voting rights a punishment for that crime, then you have just created a legal mechanism for state sponsored discrimination. Look at the drug felons as an example. It might as well be called a Jim Crow Law.