Voting rights: major slay as presented by Brettschneider

"What several of the objections we have just considered miss is the need to think about punishment in such a democratic way. Specifically, the Trop principle gives an account of what citizens are owed regarding punishment by their government" (152.) It was this sentence that gave me the slight idea that what Corey Brettschneider is doing in the paper "A democratic theory of punishment: The Trop principle" is developing an application of justice within our criminal justice system (which, ironically, is often missing the justice part) and more specifically within the punishment aspect of it through imprisonment. 


When referring to Justice I mean to invoke Tommie Shelby's definition of Social Justice as presented in Dark Ghettos which Brettschneider references in the paper. Shelby defines social justice as "legitimate claims and responsibilities that people have within a fair society" (Shelby 20.) Brettschneider argues that such a claim that incarcerated people have against the government is to the right to vote. To deprive them of this right is to commit an injustice against them. The Trop Principle guards against this injustice. 


The first part of the principle which "gives a justification for punishment that is grounded in rights to citizenship" (142) binds the democratic system to ensure that the punishments dished out to its citizens align with their citizenship. And as Brettschneider conveys later on in the paper, a crucial leg of democratic citizenship is the right to vote. So to strip someone in a democracy of their right to vote is to betray a major part of their citizenship. How can one say to be abiding by democratic processes as it deprives its citizens of the right to participate in that process? It is only an unjust, undemocratic system that can do this and if we are to say that we are a just democracy, we cant do this even as punishment. Further, if my citizenship is what binds my cooperation and respect to the law (because I have participated in creating said law), to strip me of that citizenship in any substantial way would ineffectively unbind me of my commitment to the law. Then how can one justify my imprisonment to me? This is the second part of the Trop principle. Both of these follow that punishments have to be justifiable to the democratic agent and answer to democratic structures.


Moving on, the 'warden-knows-best' theory that Brettschneider talks about and their discussion on the belief that incarcerated folk cannot exercise political judgment reminds me of what Shelby refers to as downgrade agency. Downgrade agency refers to the marginalization of the political agency of people who are arbitrarily deemed to not be capable of exercising said political agency (in Dark Ghettos he is referring to those living in the ghettos.) In the case of incarcerated folk, by virtue of their incarceration, they are incapacitated as political agents capable of making judgments that may affect them when they are stripped of their right to vote. As Brettschneider proves, this isn't true. Additionally this failure to recognize them as political agents, infantilize them and uses them as a mere means to an end (especially when considering that they are counted as part of the population when it comes to state representatives- the same representatives who do not care about their interests as incarcerated people.) 


This finally pushes us along to the necessity of the Trop principle from an epistemic view. The bare fact is the only people equipped to know what is best for people in prison, are people in prison. Not recognizing the epistemic value (shout out Dr.B) that they hold as incarcerated folk allow these injustices to persist. Without the input through voting of incarcerated folk, any policy made that involves them is misinformed and will most likely be ineffective. 


This concludes my analysis. Tomorrow I would like to inquire about the motivation that has kept voting rights from being extended to incarcerated folk which I think stems from racism and the fact that a large majority of this population is Black and Brown. Without going too deep into it, I feel if this population was more white, the topic would be more pressing. To this extent, I feel like the system is working as it is designed to and so maybe we should begin a larger conversation on prison abolishment. I think you defend a position of prison reform which I feel is inadequate for the state of our political systems. I would love to hear your views on this

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