Do Felony Disenfranchisement Laws (De)Mobilize? A Case of Surrogate Participation

A growing body of literature examines how direct or vicarious contact with forms of state surveillance affects political behavior and perceptions of government legitimacy. We develop a new method, Portals, to collect conversations between black residents from highly policed areas in five different U.S. cities between 2016 and 2018. While existing research emphasizes how interactions with the carceral state are alienating and demobilizing, our analysis of these conversations identifies productive ways in which citizens respond to oppressive encounters with police. The political discourses used by Portals participants, we argue, are centered on a logic of “collective autonomy”—given police ignorance, abuses of police authority, and the little political power that residents of highly policed communities have to demand change, many conclude that power is best achieved by strategically distancing from state institutions in the short term while building community power in the long term. Crucially, articulations of collective autonomy transcend the ideological positions of participants and track closely with an ideological tradition in black politics that persists across generations and contexts of state oppression.

Section: Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Strategy Of Community Control In the Face Of Police Oppresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Withdrawing and Drawing In: Political Discourse in Policed Communities

Weaver

Prowse

Piston

2020

“…These patterns are consistent with the behavioral consequences of proximal contact with the criminal justice system. Here, researchers find that even as proximal contact diminishes voting (Burch 2013; Walker 2014), it can nevertheless heighten participation in activities outside the ballot box (Anoll and Israel-Trummel 2019; Walker 2014). Unlike voting, activities like protesting offer an immediate outlet for frustration and fear springing from personal and proximal experiences with immigration enforcement (Gillion 2013).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We therefore borrow from findings around “the closely analogous phenomena of knowing someone who has been incarcerated or had some kind of contact with the police” to shed light on the political consequences of proximal experiences with immigration (Sanchez et al 2015, 459). This work finds that proximal criminal justice experiences are positively associated with participation when individuals view criminal justice policy as racially biased and unequally applied (Drakulich et al 2017; Anoll and Israel-Trummel 2019; Walker 2014). It is important to note that researchers observe the mobilizing effects of proximal contact with respect to non-voting activities, and that it has no relationship with voting.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ripple Effect: The Political Consequences of Proximal Contact with Immigration Enforcement

Walker

Roman

Barreto

2020

A growing body of research suggests that proximal exposure to immigration enforcement can have important social and health-related consequences. However, there is little research identifying the impact of proximal contact with immigration policy on political attitudes and behaviors, and still less investigating the underlying mechanisms that might connect contact and political dispositions. Drawing on insights from criminal justice, we argue that proximal immigration contact influences political behavior via a sense of injustice with respect to the discriminatory application of immigration enforcement. The impact of a sense of injustice should primarily hold among Latinos, who are targeted on the basis of race, ethnicity, accent, and skin color. Nevertheless, it may also hold among Blacks, whose communities are targeted more generally, and Asians, to whom issues related to immigration are likewise important. In order to assess this theory, we leverage a survey with nationally representative samples of four different racial groups. We find that proximal contact motivates participation in protests, and does so indirectly via a sense of injustice for white and Asian respondents. Latino and Black respondents are primarily motivated by injustice irrespective of contact. In sum, the results suggest that immigration enforcement and non-immigration-related criminal justice policies may have similar political effects on those who are proximately affected.

“…Yet, while much research confirms the capacity for the carceral state to erode political voice through declining trust (Maltby 2017) and diminished voting (Laniyonu 2019; Morris 2020; White 2019), revisiting the methods employed in extant studies, some researchers find a negligible relationship between incarceration and voting (Gerber et al 2017). Still, others find that exposure can be mobilizing, especially when contact is vicarious and in reference to protesting (Anoll and Israel-Trummel 2019; Laniyonu 2018; Walker 2014; 2020; Walker et al this volume; White 2016; Williamson et al 2018). Walker (2020) leverages the political threat framework to make sense of these seemingly divergent findings.…”

Section: How Marginalized People View the Criminal Legal Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Justice, No Peace: Political Science Perspectives on the American Carceral State

Harris

Walker

Eckhouse

2020

This essay explores four key dimensions of political science literature on the U.S. criminal legal system, by way of introducing articles in the special issue on criminal justice featured in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Politics. We situate police as an institution of social control, rather than providing safety for people vulnerable to crime. The vast array of policy tools to surveil, track, and detain citizens, which lack commensurate restraints on their application, amount to a finely tuned carceral machine that can be deployed against groups newly identified as deviant. We therefore turn attention to this dynamic with our second theme: the criminalization of immigrants, the expansion of interior immigration enforcement, and the consequent targeting of Latinx people. We likewise discuss lessons for reform that can be drawn from research on representation and the political socialization that occurs as a consequence of involuntary contact with the system. We conclude with a brief discussion of directions for future research. The criminal legal system is a key force for persistent racial and class inequality. By turning attention to the politics of the criminal legal system, we forward a critical and understudied facet of American political life that intersects with all corners of the discipline.