Why should people who have served out their time or done community service or finished their probation or parole, be forced to carry a felony conviction on their records for the rest of their lives? I personally know of men in their sixties and seventies who were first time offenders of property crimes as eighteen and nineteen year-olds, who still remain in the shadows of society because of a youthful felony which remains on their records - In America A Felony Equals a Life Sentence!
Thank God that there are new voices in the wilderness crying out for prison reform but they are leaving out one of the gravest injustices spawned by the old Jim Crow system. That system made a concerted effort to brand every black man caught in even the most non-violent of property crimes, with a life-time felony. Fortunately or unfortunately this has become not only a black problem but affects the lives of people of all colors.
Along with Krugman's argument describing the evolution of the southern strategy, one point that is often overlooked is how felony convictions succeeded in suppressing the votes of black men in the south. Southern judges when faced with plea-bargining a black man's felony down to a misdemenor would generally opt for the felony because of the added benefit of voting suppression.
If the Obama administration truly wants to re-introduce a sense of fairness and justice into the criminal justice system, they could start by introducing legislation that clears a felony off of a person's record after three-to-seven years. They could call it "The Jubilee Law".
If there are other Kossacs out there who share this sentiment, I would ask your help in giving this idea some added volume.
Krugman has started the snowball downhill so now is the right time to give it the kind of momentum that could really benefit so many black men who languish under these old Jim Crow rules, and in the process restore the right to vote to so many.