Convicted Felons Are People, Too

So, you might have noticed over the past few days that a lot of people in the media and press are pretty darned excited to be able to (at last! finally!) brand the twice impeached former guy a “convicted felon”. They are gleeful, not without good reason, that the clear legal evidence of criminal wrongdoing resulted in 34 guilty verdicts for a man who has seemed able to shirk accountability for his words and deeds at every turn. America has always been a “Law and Order” kind of country (explaining the 7 series in the TV franchise, for starters) and our famous love of superheroes is additional proof that we (often naively) believe quite fervently that wrongdoing will be punished and the good rewarded.

So, yeah. People have been pretty darned excited.

However, I am seeing something I believe has become very fundamental to our justice system overlooked–unless they are talking about this over on FOXNEWS, ha, ha–and that is the wildly disproportionate incident of felony convictions in our country by race. As police brutality has become headline news in a post-George Floyd world (RIP), even people with very little interest in politics have at least some awareness of the racial disparities in crime and conviction stats. In their enthusiasm for heralding the news that a wealthy, educated, powerful white man has finally met his legal match, so to speak, they are forgetting that the majority of “convicted felons” are people who grew up disadvantaged, with inadequate resources, oppressed and unable to afford adequate counsel.

In other words, let’s stop tossing “convicted felon” around like a schoolyard taunt and consider the potential ramifications of this.

I don’t want to bore you with a million stats you are easily capable of googling yourself–if you are the sort of person who is interested in racial equity and social change–but I do want to point out the very obvious fact that a “convicted felon” who grew up in poverty and/or surrounded by addiction and/or subjected to abuse and/or unfairly targeted by local authorities is NOT in any way EQUAL to a “convicted felon” who had everything handed to him on a silver platter (or gold toilet, if you will) and still managed to get his ass handed to him in a criminal trial. Really, we need to make a mental note of this and stop with the nyah-nyah-nyah-nah-nah rhetoric. Add into the mix that not all felonies are created equal, either–a “convicted felon” might be a forger or a murderer, you see the difference?–and I think you might be catching my drift.

We have published many excellent articles on this subject in the past, and I encourage you to take a look at Andrew D. Kaufman’s Compassion and Humility Must Lead the Way to Criminal Justice Reform, Tim Wise on how A Simple Thought Experiment Can Tell if Black Lives Really Matter to You, Matthew Rosing writing about his personal experience in We Can Break the Cycle of Poverty, Mental Illness, and Prison, and Bill Smoot telling us about Teaching Ethics at San Quentin.

In life, much like in the jury box, we need to listen carefully and take all of the evidence into consideration. The more information we have, the better, so that when we make decisions (come to a verdict), we can feel confident that we have done the very best we could with the knowledge we had at the time. And if new information (evidence) comes to light, we need to be able to amend our earlier convictions (pun intended).

I am not saying you cannot enjoy this moment, especially after so many previous moments where overwhelming evidence was denied by the people with the power to enact change. It does feel good and we sigh a breath of relief when we feel that justice has been served. But by the stats, a wealthy white convicted felon is an anomaly, and this should be part of the conversation.

If you are interested in learning more, here are some resources for you:

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