Felon re-enfranchisement, race, and arrests

Abstract

Civil right activists have long advocated for felons’ re-enfranchisement on the ground that felony laws disproportionately affect African Americans due to racial biases in policing. Following their campaigns, several U.S states have recently re-enfranchised felons. We exploit the staggered introduction of such reforms to study the impact of re-enfranchising felons on county-level arrests rates of African Americans. We find that felons re-enfranchisement yields an increase in arrests rates of African Americans in prevalently white counties and a decrease in counties with a sizable Black community. We investigate several explanations for this dual pattern. We show that the strength of civil rights organizations is most likely to explain the decrease in arrest rates of African Americans we document. We find no evidence in favour of an electoral mechanism or a change in crime rates. Additional tests also reveal that felon re-enfranchisement may have triggered a backlash by White citizens.