Living in Infamy by Pippa Holloway
Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship examines the history of disfranchisement for criminal conviction in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the post-war South, white southern Democrats expanded the usage of laws disfranchising for crimes of infamy in order to deny African Americans the suffrage rights due them as citizens, employing historical similarities between the legal statuses of slaves and convicts as justification. At the same time, our nation's criminal code changed. The inhumane treatment of prisoners, the expansion of the prison system, the public nature of punishment by forced labor, and the abandonment of the idea of reform and rehabilitation of prisoners all contributed to a national consensus that certain categories of criminals should be permanently disfranchised. As racial barriers to suffrage were challenged and fell, rights remained restricted for persons targeted by such infamy laws. Criminal convictions-in place of race-continued the disparity in legal status between whites and African Americans. Decades later, after race-based disfranchisement has officially ended, legislation steeped in a legacy of racial discrimination continues to perpetuate a dichotomy of suffrage and citizenship that is still effecting our election outcomes today.
This is a book that needed to be writtenFor the first time we now have a comprehensive and sophisticated historical analysis of the racial dynamics of felony disenfranchisement as it evolved in the post-Civil War South. It's not a pretty picture, but it helps us to understand how we came to a point where U.S. policies in this regard are far out of line with the rest of the democratic world. * Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project, and author of Race to Incarcerate *
Pippa Holloway is Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University. She is the author of Sexuality, Politics, and Social Control in Virginia, 1920-1945 and Other Souths: Diversity and Difference in the U.S. South, Reconstruction to Present.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780199976089 |
| ISBN 10 | 0199976082 |
| Title | Living in Infamy |
| Author | Pippa Holloway |
| Series | Studies In Crime And Public Policy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 2014-01-23 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |