NPI at Netroots Nation 2022: Talking ending felony disenfranchisement with Nicole Porter

Wel­come to the fifth install­ment of NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh. NPI staff jour­neyed to Steel City this past week to par­tic­i­pate in the nation’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive activists.

As part of our con­fer­ence cov­er­age, we’re bring­ing you a series of con­ver­sa­tions with key move­ment lead­ers and elect­ed officials.

In this install­ment of NPI@NN, we’re hon­ored to be joined by Nicole Porter, Senior Direc­tor of Advo­ca­cy at The Sen­tenc­ing Project. Press play below to lis­ten to the audio, or read the tran­script below.

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(Note: this tran­script has been edit­ed light­ly for clarity) 

CAYA: Wel­come to NPI at Net­roots 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series from the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia! I’m your host Caya Berndt. We’re super glad to have you with us. For this install­ment, we are excit­ed to be joined by Nicole Porter, the Senior Direc­tor of Advo­ca­cy for The Sen­tenc­ing Project. 

Wel­come, Nicole! 

NICOLE: Thank you so much for hav­ing me, Caya. Appre­ci­ate being here.

CAYA: We real­ly appre­ci­ate you being here too! [Why don’t you start by telling us] about who you are and what your orga­ni­za­tion is? What do you do? 

NICOLE: Sure. Well, The Sen­tenc­ing Project is a research and advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion based in DC.. We’ve been around since the mid-eight­ies. We do research relat­ed to incar­cer­a­tion, and are work­ing on a more humane response to crime and crime pre­ven­tion through a racial jus­tice and gen­der jus­tice lens.

I am the Senior Direc­tor of Advo­ca­cy. I’ve been with the orga­ni­za­tion for over a decade, and my port­fo­lio is based most­ly on state issues and state advo­ca­cy. I work with our staff and col­leagues and sis­ter orga­ni­za­tions to chal­lenge mass incar­cer­a­tion and expand vot­ing rights to peo­ple regard­less of their crim­i­nal or legal back­ground I most recent­ly pub­lished a report on prison clo­sures and prison repur­pos­ing, which I’m very excit­ed about.

CAYA: Yeah. I’d like to know a lit­tle bit more about that report. Can you tell us about what’s in it? 

NICOLE: Sure. The key find­ing of the report is that since 2000, at least twen­ty-one states ful­ly closed or par­tial­ly closed at least one cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, and tak­ing over 81,000 prison beds offline. The report also high­lights exam­ples of prison reuse in states like New York, Michi­gan, and Tennessee. 

In Ten­nessee, a closed prison has been repur­posed to a whiskey dis­tillery and event space. In New York, a closed prison has been repur­posed to a movie stu­dio. And I’m very excit­ed about a cur­rent project that the report high­lights in Texas, my home state, where a closed a prison, which sits on a nature con­ser­van­cy, is being repur­posed for com­mu­ni­ty space. So the pur­pose of the report was to doc­u­ment what can hap­pen when a prison is closed. And there have been open­ings for prison clo­sures dat­ing back to 2000, as the report high­lights for many rea­sons. States over the last twen­ty, thir­ty years have gone through fis­cal crises, reces­sions, and that has cre­at­ed pres­sure to reduce state bud­gets. And one key way to reduce state bud­gets is to reduce its cor­rec­tion system.

So, cer­tain­ly in the 2010–2011 reces­sion, that cre­at­ed pres­sure for states like New York and states like Texas to close pris­ons. And once pris­ons are closed, plan­ning for their reuse is impor­tant because if not, they can be reopened for addi­tion­al cor­rec­tion­al pur­pos­es. There’s been exam­ples of closed adult pris­ons in the state crim­i­nal legal sys­tem being repur­posed for immi­grant detention. 

There’s been exam­ples of closed youth pris­ons being trans­ferred to the adult crim­i­nal legal sys­tem. So it’s very impor­tant for offi­cials to not just end stake­hold­ers’ decarcer­a­tion advo­cates, to not just focus on the clo­sure itself, but to actu­al­ly plan for what can hap­pen with the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty once it’s closed, to be repur­posed for a new use. 

CAYA: That’s real­ly inter­est­ing. I would’ve nev­er have thought about that. It’s almost like once that vacant space and its pur­pose is there, it still remains open for con­tin­ued exploita­tion. So it’s almost like… shut­ting it down before that can happen.

NICOLE: Absolute­ly. And in fact, some pris­ons, when they’re closed, they do what’s called a “soft clo­sure,” or “warm clo­sure.” In fact, in Wash­ing­ton State, there are exam­ples of this now – I’m sor­ry, not Wash­ing­ton State, Ore­gon – there are exam­ples of this, because there’s been one or two pris­ons in the last year or so that were announced for a warm clo­sure, which means the prison isn’t ful­ly shut down. There are still staff paid to make sure the water runs, to secure the facil­i­ty, and the announce­ment of the warm clo­sure, the pre­text for that from the gov­er­nor and from the state offi­cials, was that in case the prison pop­u­la­tion increas­es again, we wan­na make sure that the prison is ready to dis­ap­pear new res­i­dents to it for fur­ther incar­cer­a­tion pur­pos­es.

So the real­i­ty is this: the Unit­ed States still has the high­est incar­cer­a­tion rate in the world. Even though there’s been a mod­est decline, since the prison pop­u­la­tion peaked in 2009, even with that mod­est decline, there’s still way too high of a prison pop­u­la­tion. And because we have such a high prison pop­u­la­tion, the Unit­ed States over­built its prison sys­tem in the sev­en­ties, eight­ies, and nineties as a response to the increase in crime, and as a response to the increase in the prison pop­u­la­tion that start­ed in the ear­ly seventies.

Now, oth­er coun­tries also had an increase in crime at the same time that the Unit­ed States did in the ear­ly sev­en­ties, but they did not choose to respond with puni­tive­ness that then led to an increase in prison admis­sions and length­en­ing terms of stays in state and fed­er­al prison sys­tems, which then led to an increase in the num­ber of prison beds in prison facil­i­ties around the country.

So what the Unit­ed States need­ed to do now, even in the midst of shift­ing crime trends, rather than rely on the sta­tus quo that dis­ap­pears its most mar­gin­al­ized and dis­en­fran­chised res­i­dents to prison, the Unit­ed States should be pri­or­i­tiz­ing pre­ven­tion-based pub­lic safe­ty solu­tions, com­mu­ni­ty based pub­lic safe­ty solu­tions that under­stands that every­body in this coun­try, regard­less of what zip code they were born into, or what com­mu­ni­ty they were born into, has a future and deserves a future. And so the Unit­ed States should be work­ing now to cor­rect for the harms of the last fifty years of the mass incar­cer­a­tion era, even in the midst of con­cerns about crime, to be focus­ing its resources on pre­ven­tion-based solu­tions, rather than the sta­tus quo prac­tice of dis­ap­pear­ing peo­ple to prison and sus­tain­ing the high incar­cer­a­tion rate that the coun­try has. 

CAYA: Absolute­ly. And again, I like what you men­tioned about this influx of build­ing pris­ons, because I think that there can be… peo­ple are more con­cerned about crime than there is actu­al crime, if that makes sense.

NICOLE: Yes. There is a mis­per­cep­tion of crime because of the way crime is cov­ered, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the local news. If you can imag­ine old­er peo­ple who are home­bound, who may not have access to oth­er forms of enter­tain­ment, just their local TV sta­tions, are inun­dat­ed with sto­ries of crime, and have a mis­per­cep­tion of the preva­lence of crime with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. Now, the real­i­ty is that there are some neigh­bor­hoods, even in the midst of a crime decline – because crime start­ed declin­ing in the ear­ly nineties – as a pro­gres­sive, I don’t wan­na min­i­mize or dis­miss the preva­lence of crime in some communities. 

The real­i­ty is that crime is too high in some com­mu­ni­ties, but the way in which the Unit­ed States has respond­ed to that, with the over­polic­ing, with the extrac­tion of res­i­dents for a range of offens­es, because we send peo­ple to prison for things in this coun­try that they just don’t get sent to prison for in oth­er parts of the world, the life­time col­lat­er­al con­se­quences that we sub­ject res­i­dents to…it’s a com­plete­ly out­ra­geous response to crime break­ing in a way that dehu­man­izes res­i­dents, and uses the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem as a pre­text for that dehumanization. 

Regard­less of some­one’s [law]breaking, there’s still a human and there’s still a cit­i­zen. And the prob­lem in this coun­try – this is because of a through line of the racial caste sys­tem – is that the way the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem cur­rent­ly oper­ates is to not just dehu­man­ize Amer­i­can cit­i­zens and Amer­i­can res­i­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly for res­i­dents who may not have cit­i­zen­ship, but it also strips peo­ple, cit­i­zens, of cit­i­zen­ship, and then under­mines the abil­i­ty of res­i­dents to become cit­i­zens.

That is because of the way the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem has evolved in the con­text of this coun­try, giv­en the racial caste sys­tem, and giv­en the exten­sion of law enforce­ment as a way to medi­ate between the cit­i­zen, and the res­i­dent, and the state, and their rela­tion­ship as an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen with­in this country.

CAYA: Thank you, that was a fan­tas­tic answer. 

And the dis­en­fran­chise­ment and the strip­ping of cit­i­zen­hood, that’s what shows up in not extend­ing vot­ing rights to peo­ple with dif­fer­ent crim­i­nal con­vic­tions or dif­fer­ent felony con­vic­tions. To give a bit of my per­son­al expe­ri­ence, I have encoun­tered a lot of push­back when I’ve brought that up with peo­ple, even peo­ple who might oth­er­wise be well-mean­ing. They still might be resis­tant to the idea of let­ting peo­ple with felony con­vic­tions vote, because our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is mod­eled in such a way that com­mu­ni­cates that some actions make you no longer wor­thy of par­tic­i­pat­ing in our democracy.

And I feel like there are some peo­ple that still believe that. So what would be the best way to go about a con­ver­sa­tion with some­body who is resis­tant or hes­i­tant on the idea of giv­ing vot­ing rights back to felons? 

NICOLE: Well, the Sen­tenc­ing Project believes that once some­one gets their vot­ing rights, they should cer­tain­ly nev­er lose them. And the Unit­ed States is an out­lier amongst west­ern democ­ra­cies that denies vot­ing rights to peo­ple with crim­i­nal legal con­vic­tion his­to­ries. In some states, peo­ple lose their vot­ing rights for life. So they could have com­mit­ted a felony offense in their ear­ly twen­ties, which is com­mon in this coun­try, giv­en the over-polic­ing of neigh­bor­hoods, par­tic­u­lar­ly start­ing in the eight­ies dur­ing the start of the War on Drugs. 

You can imag­ine young men, young men of col­or, dri­ving through a neigh­bor­hood in Hous­ton, or Atlanta, or Birm­ing­ham, being stopped for a traf­fic infrac­tion, and the inter­ac­tion esca­lat­ing, as many peo­ple have wit­nessed over the last cou­ple of years with the exam­ples of George Floyd, and oth­er high-pro­file police inter­ac­tions that quick­ly esca­late, and that young man in Hous­ton, Atlanta, or Birm­ing­ham, get­ting a felony case. 

And the real­i­ty is that the increase of con­tact with law enforce­ment start­ed in the eight­ies, and has been a dri­ving force in mass incar­cer­a­tion, con­tribut­ing to the sky­rock­et­ing prison sys­tem, which then extends to a sky­rock­et­ing num­ber of peo­ple impact­ed by col­lat­er­al con­se­quences, includ­ing a loss of vot­ing rights.

In fact, as of 2020, the num­ber of peo­ple who could not vote because of a felony con­vic­tion in this coun­try was over five mil­lion. And the major­i­ty of those indi­vid­u­als were liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty. They were not in prison.

There were about two mil­lion in prison. So, more than three mil­lion, were liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty and dis­en­fran­chised from vot­ing. Those indi­vid­u­als live in states like Vir­ginia and Ken­tucky, and are dis­en­fran­chised for life unless they get a par­don from the gov­er­nor, or receive some oth­er rem­e­dy. But in Vir­ginia, over 300,000 peo­ple are dis­en­fran­chised from vot­ing. In Ken­tucky, over a hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple were dis­en­fran­chised from vot­ing. The state that had the most, that has the largest dis­en­fran­chised pop­u­la­tion, is Florida.

Now, Flori­da had a major reform in 2018 by expand­ing vot­ing rights to peo­ple once they com­plet­ed their sen­tence (most peo­ple), and about a mil­lion peo­ple got their vot­ing rights back. Sig­nif­i­cant reform. 

But it still has a too large vot­ing ban, because peo­ple cur­rent­ly serv­ing their sen­tence on pro­ba­tion or parole in that state can’t vote. But the reform that got adopt­ed a few years ago, by over 60% sup­port of Flori­da vot­ers, Amend­ment Four, was sig­nif­i­cant and huge, and real­ly helped to build momen­tum for the need to expand vot­ing rights, and end these vot­ing rights bans. 

So the real­i­ty is that when some­body is arrest­ed and con­vict­ed, for break­ing a law, for crime break­ing, they lose liberty. 

They’re sub­ject­ed to a term of impris­on­ment, a jail term. They may be sub­ject­ed to a peri­od of com­mu­ni­ty super­vi­sion, probation. 

That is the sen­tence. Peo­ple’s move­ment is restrict­ed. If they’re sen­tenced to prison or jail, they have some­body that has to tell them when to wake up. Some­body puts them in their cell, forces them into their cell, and lim­its when they can move about. They can’t go, they can’t trav­el, even if they’re under com­mu­ni­ty super­vi­sion, they have to get per­mis­sion from their pro­ba­tion or parole offi­cer to trav­el out of their home juris­dic­tion – cer­tain­ly out of state. 

I work with for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed activists who are still on parole super­vi­sion. I orga­nized a meet­ing of peo­ple in Den­ver a few weeks ago. Sev­er­al of the folks had to get per­mis­sion from their parole offi­cers in order to come. 

And these are grown peo­ple, some of them elder­ly, who had to get per­mis­sion, like they’re teenagers, and they have to ask their par­ent for per­mis­sion to go some­where. That is a penal­ty! So the idea that we would attach addi­tion­al penal­ties onto that, among the most extreme being the loss of vot­ing rights, oth­er penal­ties include legal dis­crim­i­na­tion, lit­er­al­ly, for employ­ment because of some­one’s crim­i­nal back­ground his­to­ry, legal hous­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion in pub­lic and pri­vate hous­ing, because of some­one’s crim­i­nal background.

That is why it’s the peo­ple who are resis­tant to the idea of vot­ing rights. Why should we care about vot­ing rights? Peo­ple should care because, rest assured, that the mil­lions of peo­ple who are in prison, in jail today, and the addi­tion­al mil­lions who are liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty under pro­ba­tion or parole super­vi­sion, they are being pun­ished. Peo­ple in this coun­try do not have to wor­ry about pun­ish­ment, giv­en the extreme sever­i­ty of pun­ish­ment that many peo­ple are sub­ject­ed to. We have over 200,000 peo­ple in this coun­try sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment. We still sen­tence peo­ple to death. 

There’s still been exe­cu­tions this year, in this country.

Peo­ple should not dis­miss or min­i­mize the lev­el of extreme sever­i­ty that the Amer­i­can legal sys­tem sub­jects its cit­i­zens and its res­i­dents to. An exten­sion of that are vot­ing bans and felony dis­en­fran­chise­ment. Peo­ple should be con­cerned by that, because the way in which the sys­tem now func­tions is that the gov­ern­ment, the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem, can medi­ate between the cit­i­zen and the elec­torate. And if some­body is under crim­i­nal legal super­vi­sion, or has con­tact with the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem in some states like Vir­ginia or Ken­tucky, for life. So that’s why peo­ple should be con­cerned. And that was a very long answer!

CAYA: It was fan­tas­tic. And I think it real­ly got to the heart of the con­ver­sa­tion, and that is the fun­da­men­tal lib­er­ty that every­body is enti­tled to.

NICOLE: Yeah, peo­ple dis­miss the lib­er­ty part. The fact that peo­ple actu­al­ly lose it when they’re con­vict­ed of a crime. And it’s not to say that peo­ple should­n’t be held account­able, but peo­ple are being sen­tenced to decades-long prison terms, and they’re being sub­ject­ed to life­time-long col­lat­er­al con­se­quences. And the loss of lib­er­ty is a sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence that peo­ple are sub­ject­ed to. So peo­ple should not min­i­mize that. 

CAYA: We’re run­ning close to time here, [so] before we go, I have just have one more ques­tion for you: for those lis­ten­ers who are want­i­ng to learn more about the his­to­ry of incar­cer­a­tion or some of these top­ics that you’ve brought up, are there any books, any pod­casts, any­thing that you would rec­om­mend for some­body who is want­i­ng to learn more about this subject? 

NICOLE: Well, they can vis­it us online at sentencinggproject.org. We do have a primer on felony dis­en­fran­chise­ment, which is a good explain­er, a good back­ground doc­u­ment. Also stay in touch with us, vis­it us online, sign up for our email list, because we’ll be hav­ing an upcom­ing nation­al report that updates the esti­mates on peo­ple impact­ed by a felony dis­en­fran­chise­ment in the next cou­ple of months, so stay tuned for that. And books! There’s so many. 

What I’m read­ing right now, I’m read­ing The 1619 Project, which is the book that updates the work that Nikole Han­nah-Jones was doing with the New York Times a cou­ple years ago. It’s fan­tas­tic, as of course the series was, or the spe­cial insert was. It real­ly pro­vides a great overview of not just jus­tice issues, but a range of oth­er issues, includ­ing, traf­fic and health­care, in how anti-Black racism influ­ences pol­i­cy in the Unit­ed States. So I would rec­om­mend lis­ten­ers read that. 

CAYA: Alright, thank you very much. 

That was Nicole Porter with the Sen­tenc­ing Project, and that was this install­ment of NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022! Please feel free to join us for the next install­ment. For NPI, I’m Caya Berndt.

Read­ers can view an online ver­sion of the report men­tioned in this episode  (Repur­pos­ing Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ties to Strength­en Com­mu­ni­ties) at this link.