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my favorite feature of the new york times is the “modern love” column which runs on sundays. it offers a new, thoughtful essay–from a wide range of perspectives–every week, chronicling the challenges, exhilaration, and lessons learned from, well, modern love.

this week’s essay was written by asha bandele, a woman who fell in love with and married a prison inmate.

part of me cringed when i read her opening paragraphs. she describes meeting her husband, rashid, “five years earlier, when I was 23, a college student teaching poetry to prisoners.” the two of them formed a bond over poetry and the possibilities for transformation. as she writes: “Over the course of a year and many discussions about changing ourselves and our world, we fell in love. With Rashid there was this breadth of dialogue I hadn’t experienced before. Our conversations — unspeakably honest — were for me life-saving.”

while i fully respect true connection between two souls, i also hate to see prison administrators given more evidence that young women–or any women–who come into jails/prisons/youth facilities are likely to fall in love with charismatic inmates. i faced some of these biases and concerns myself when conducting ethnographic research with adolescent males in a juvenile correctional facility. i resented the staff members’ suspicions, but i also understood the reason for them every time i heard a new horror story of female employees or volunteers who got too close to inmates and violated the rules by smuggling in contraband or trying to smuggle out the objects of their affection. it happens and good programs can suffer.

at the same time, i really appreciate ms. bandele’s honest and painful rendering of her story. she writes eloquently of the difficulties of trying to live a “normal” life with a husband behind bars, dealing with unplanned pregnancies. she had a daughter, nisa, and essentially raised her as a single parent, punctuated with visits to prison to see her father. the pressures were enormous and the costs tremendously high; as ms bandele explains:

I lost pieces of myself I’m only now trying to reclaim.

I started smoking again. I spent too many nights drinking wine and crying. There were times when pain threatened to define the whole of me. And no, no, I couldn’t hold my marriage together.

CARING for Rashid and Nisa at the same time was more than I could bear: the weekly treks through metal detectors, the parts of my spirit that always got snagged by the razor wire. I still take Nisa to see her father, but staying romantically entangled with Rashid, when I most feel his absence, was too painful.

i think ms. bandele has offered a vivid personal look into what criminologists call the “collateral consequences” of incarceration. it is all too clear that incarceration deeply affects family members as well as inmates in ways we are still struggling to understand. i appreciate that ms. bandele chose “modern love” as her forum, because i’m sure criminologists are only a tiny portion of the readers of that column. hopefully, her essay will bring some larger public attention to this important and timely topic.

*illustration by David Chelsea, New York Times

my favorite feature of the new york times is the “modern love” column which runs on sundays. it offers a new, thoughtful essay–from a wide range of perspectives–every week, chronicling the challenges, exhilaration, and lessons learned from, well, modern love.

this week’s essay was written by asha bandele, a woman who fell in love with and married a prison inmate.

part of me cringed when i read her opening paragraphs. she describes meeting her husband, rashid, “five years earlier, when I was 23, a college student teaching poetry to prisoners.” the two of them formed a bond over poetry and the possibilities for transformation. as she writes: “Over the course of a year and many discussions about changing ourselves and our world, we fell in love. With Rashid there was this breadth of dialogue I hadn’t experienced before. Our conversations — unspeakably honest — were for me life-saving.”

while i fully respect true connection between two souls, i also hate to see prison administrators given more evidence that young women–or any women–who come into jails/prisons/youth facilities are likely to fall in love with charismatic inmates. i faced some of these biases and concerns myself when conducting ethnographic research with adolescent males in a juvenile correctional facility. i resented the staff members’ suspicions, but i also understood the reason for them every time i heard a new horror story of female employees or volunteers who got too close to inmates and violated the rules by smuggling in contraband or trying to smuggle out the objects of their affection. it happens and good programs can suffer.

at the same time, i really appreciate ms. bandele’s honest and painful rendering of her story. she writes eloquently of the difficulties of trying to live a “normal” life with a husband behind bars, dealing with unplanned pregnancies. she had a daughter, nisa, and essentially raised her as a single parent, punctuated with visits to prison to see her father. the pressures were enormous and the costs tremendously high; as ms bandele explains:

I lost pieces of myself I’m only now trying to reclaim.

I started smoking again. I spent too many nights drinking wine and crying. There were times when pain threatened to define the whole of me. And no, no, I couldn’t hold my marriage together.

CARING for Rashid and Nisa at the same time was more than I could bear: the weekly treks through metal detectors, the parts of my spirit that always got snagged by the razor wire. I still take Nisa to see her father, but staying romantically entangled with Rashid, when I most feel his absence, was too painful.

i think ms. bandele has offered a vivid personal look into what criminologists call the “collateral consequences” of incarceration. it is all too clear that incarceration deeply affects family members as well as inmates in ways we are still struggling to understand. i appreciate that ms. bandele chose “modern love” as her forum, because i’m sure criminologists are only a tiny portion of the readers of that column. hopefully, her essay will bring some larger public attention to this important and timely topic.

*illustration by David Chelsea, New York Times

i got word today that a reenfranchisement bill will be discussed monday in the minnesota senate.

my understanding is that the proposal would extend voting rights to all non-incarcerated felons, including those serving probation and parole sentences. prisoners, however, would remain disenfranchised.

the last time such a bill came up for discussion, i did a rough memo using 2003 data on the likely effects. by my count, at least three-fourths of the disenfranchised felons in the state would regain the right to vote. it would reduce the african american disenfranchisement rate from about 12 percent of the voting age population to less than 4 percent and the rate of non-african american disenfranchisement from about 1 percent to about 0.3 percent. i’ll need to update these numbers for 2004 (2005 won’t be available yet), but the basic patterns should hold.

only a few minutes are allotted for discussion on monday, but here are some particulars:

On Monday, March 20, 2006 at 3 p.m. the following bills are in the Senate Election Committee in Room 107 of Capitol.

Agenda:
S.F. 1752-Hottinger: Restoring the right to vote for certain convicted felons (allows ex-felons to vote when they get out of confinement);
S.F. 2743-Pariseau: Criteria for voting systems;
S.F. 3038-Higgins: Prohibiting voter challenges based on mailings by parties;
S.F. 3039-Higgins: Prohibiting deceptive practices regarding election time, place, etc.
S.F. 3040-Higgins: Re-authorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965

i got word today that a reenfranchisement bill will be discussed monday in the minnesota senate.

my understanding is that the proposal would extend voting rights to all non-incarcerated felons, including those serving probation and parole sentences. prisoners, however, would remain disenfranchised.

the last time such a bill came up for discussion, i did a rough memo using 2003 data on the likely effects. by my count, at least three-fourths of the disenfranchised felons in the state would regain the right to vote. it would reduce the african american disenfranchisement rate from about 12 percent of the voting age population to less than 4 percent and the rate of non-african american disenfranchisement from about 1 percent to about 0.3 percent. i’ll need to update these numbers for 2004 (2005 won’t be available yet), but the basic patterns should hold.

only a few minutes are allotted for discussion on monday, but here are some particulars:

On Monday, March 20, 2006 at 3 p.m. the following bills are in the Senate Election Committee in Room 107 of Capitol.

Agenda:
S.F. 1752-Hottinger: Restoring the right to vote for certain convicted felons (allows ex-felons to vote when they get out of confinement);
S.F. 2743-Pariseau: Criteria for voting systems;
S.F. 3038-Higgins: Prohibiting voter challenges based on mailings by parties;
S.F. 3039-Higgins: Prohibiting deceptive practices regarding election time, place, etc.
S.F. 3040-Higgins: Re-authorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965

rob sampson has a fascinating op-ed on immigration and crime in the times this week. sampson argues that increasing immigration in the 1990s may have had something to do with declining crime rates.

this is a provocative argument, but plausible so long as the baseline homicide rate of u.s.-born citizens exceeds the average homicide rate of the new immigrants.

such an effect is perhaps easier to see with a gender example. imagine that 75 percent of the new immigrants were women and, of course, that women commit fewer homicides than men. the incoming low-homicide group would pull down the overall rate in the larger population.

as long as the newcomers are less violent than the society they enter, immigration will similarly push down homicide rates. on this dimension at least, our newcomers appear to have had a civilizing influence on american life.

as for the author, i cannot think of a finer american sociologist than robert j. sampson. his status as a card-carrying criminologist might color my perceptions, but his record speaks for itself — and humbles the rest of us. surely he has helped me over the years and it is in my interest to speak well of him. nevertheless, i think i can look at sampson’s oeuvre critically and objectively because we think about social life in very different ways. in any case, the fact that he is writing op-eds bodes well for public sociologies and criminologies.

rob sampson has a fascinating op-ed on immigration and crime in the times this week. sampson argues that increasing immigration in the 1990s may have had something to do with declining crime rates.

this is a provocative argument, but plausible so long as the baseline homicide rate of u.s.-born citizens exceeds the average homicide rate of the new immigrants.

such an effect is perhaps easier to see with a gender example. imagine that 75 percent of the new immigrants were women and, of course, that women commit fewer homicides than men. the incoming low-homicide group would pull down the overall rate in the larger population.

as long as the newcomers are less violent than the society they enter, immigration will similarly push down homicide rates. on this dimension at least, our newcomers appear to have had a civilizing influence on american life.

as for the author, i cannot think of a finer american sociologist than robert j. sampson. his status as a card-carrying criminologist might color my perceptions, but his record speaks for itself — and humbles the rest of us. surely he has helped me over the years and it is in my interest to speak well of him. nevertheless, i think i can look at sampson’s oeuvre critically and objectively because we think about social life in very different ways. in any case, the fact that he is writing op-eds bodes well for public sociologies and criminologies.

like many minnesotans, i traveled south for spring break. i’m writing from canada, after speaking today at the university of toronto centre of criminology.

it was my first presentation of the felon voting book outside the united states. until i was putting slides together with an eye to my canadian hosts, i hadn’t realized just what a peculiarly american story we were telling. some tell me that canada and minnesota aren’t terribly different on most dimensions. still, after a quick two-hour flight, the history of felon voting restrictions in the states looks strange and twisty indeed. i guess that’s why we subtitled it “felon disenfranchisement and american democracy.”

i’ve long known, of course, that the u.s. has the strictest felon voting laws and the highest rate of criminal punishment in the world. but the story also requires reference to racial conflict and the civil war, low american rates of political participation, and the generally punitive attitudes of americans on crime. even the american conception of felony takes in a broad range of behaviors (e.g., some forms of drug possession and theft) that may not be considered serious offenses in other nations.

i’m still working to get my head around international variation in felon voting restrictions, but by any measure the united states really stands alone on this issue. we wrote about this, of course, but it is another matter to try to explain it. proust wrote that traveling is not about “seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” after thinking about felon voting for almost nine years, i figured i’d have to travel a bit farther to gain a new frame of reference.

like many minnesotans, i traveled south for spring break. i’m writing from canada, after speaking today at the university of toronto centre of criminology.

it was my first presentation of the felon voting book outside the united states. until i was putting slides together with an eye to my canadian hosts, i hadn’t realized just what a peculiarly american story we were telling. some tell me that canada and minnesota aren’t terribly different on most dimensions. still, after a quick two-hour flight, the history of felon voting restrictions in the states looks strange and twisty indeed. i guess that’s why we subtitled it “felon disenfranchisement and american democracy.”

i’ve long known, of course, that the u.s. has the strictest felon voting laws and the highest rate of criminal punishment in the world. but the story also requires reference to racial conflict and the civil war, low american rates of political participation, and the generally punitive attitudes of americans on crime. even the american conception of felony takes in a broad range of behaviors (e.g., some forms of drug possession and theft) that may not be considered serious offenses in other nations.

i’m still working to get my head around international variation in felon voting restrictions, but by any measure the united states really stands alone on this issue. we wrote about this, of course, but it is another matter to try to explain it. proust wrote that traveling is not about “seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” after thinking about felon voting for almost nine years, i figured i’d have to travel a bit farther to gain a new frame of reference.

corrections corporation of america bills itself as prison privatization at its best. would you invest in an incarceration company? should your university?

the yale daily news reports that their graduate employees and students organization is calling for the university to divest from cca. you might recall campus divestment protests over holdings in south africa and other nations. for example, all companies doing business in sudan were recently dropped from yale’s portfolio. although cca lobbies to increase prison sentences, however, the university argues that cca’s work does not constitute the sort of “grave social injury” that would trigger divestment.

i haven’t invested in private prisons. i suppose that i might if i believed that they were incarcerating more effectively or more humanely than the state. yale student daniel pozen makes the case that, relative to nonprofit and public management, private for-profit prisons underperform on recidivism. to date, i don’t think we have a definitive recidivism study on this topic. still, i don’t see much evidence here for greater effectiveness.

the second question to ask is whether you or your university is actually making any money on cca. probably not. as an investment, cca has been losing ground to broad indexes such as the s&p500 for the past five years.

corrections corporation of america bills itself as prison privatization at its best. would you invest in an incarceration company? should your university?

the yale daily news reports that their graduate employees and students organization is calling for the university to divest from cca. you might recall campus divestment protests over holdings in south africa and other nations. for example, all companies doing business in sudan were recently dropped from yale’s portfolio. although cca lobbies to increase prison sentences, however, the university argues that cca’s work does not constitute the sort of “grave social injury” that would trigger divestment.

i haven’t invested in private prisons. i suppose that i might if i believed that they were incarcerating more effectively or more humanely than the state. yale student daniel pozen makes the case that, relative to nonprofit and public management, private for-profit prisons underperform on recidivism. to date, i don’t think we have a definitive recidivism study on this topic. still, i don’t see much evidence here for greater effectiveness.

the second question to ask is whether you or your university is actually making any money on cca. probably not. as an investment, cca has been losing ground to broad indexes such as the s&p500 for the past five years.