Oregon does not strip the right to vote, thankfully.
Stripping them of the right to vote, along with all of the other privileges (mostly by convention, rather than by statute) one loses once convicted of a felony, would be a really convenient way for those in power to insure that their critics are powerless.
Several of my friends have faced felony charges for various protest activities (non-violent civil disobedience, mostly). It is not at all theoretical that our state would use the criminal justice system to effectively muzzle critics; a combination of jail time, plus the crippling effect a felony has on your ability to work and earn a living, plus the inability to vote, plus the ability of the justice system to suck you back in much more easily from the moment you've been convicted of a felony, adds up to a very powerful set of tools for silencing dissent.
And that's ignoring the disproportionately higher incarceration rate of black men in america.
All the tiny efforts taken to suppress voting end up making quite a dramatic difference in close elections.
For Republican politicians and operatives, it’s smart political strategy (at least in a short-term zero-sum kind of way, assuming the only goal is to win the next election rather than to govern effectively or build a stable society). Likewise, it’s smart political strategy for Democratic party politicians and operatives to make voter registration and voting easy and convenient, because on the margins the additional votes tend to go to Democrats.
On the bright side, voting rights for ex-felons have actually been improving somewhat over the last 20 years, even if that improvement is patchy and has regressed in some places. Unfortunately, many other types of voter suppression have gotten worse.
The US has a fetish for punishing evildoers for their wickedness. Rehabilitation and crime prevention are secondary concerns at best. If you committed a crime, you're a criminal. If you have been convicted, you're a convict, forever.
The only way to understand how a country can be this fucked up is if you consider that it was founded by puritans. To this day, US politics are still more based on Christian extremist morals than basic human rights. Let's not forget that the Prohibition -- the banning of alcohol on purely "moral" grounds -- happened less than a hundred years ago.
Sure, the US is not as bad as Saudi Arabia -- it's not literally using religious scripture to derive its legal system -- but the mindset of a large portion of the population is dangerously close.
Your argument is poor - deterrents aren't 100% effective in eliminating crime but that doesn't mean they don't work.
I'm not saying they're the most effective answer in all cases.
From another angle "deterrent" literally means something that deters so it's truistic that they work, they're not deterrents otherwise. That's more semantics than anything though.
Does anyone know of any studies on the subject?
As for other crimes and punishments I am not aware of any specific studies. Although I would say that for the most part the threat of a jail sentence for any length of time is a deterrent in my opinion. If it were not a deterrent society would see much higher crime rates than we currently do as simply no one would be deterred by the threat of going to jail. That's just my opinion though.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/deterrence%20briefing%2...
EDITED TO ADD: To note I do agree with you that what if jail/prison is not a deterrent then we are doing it wrong. To some extent this is a true statement. It has been shown that some collateral consequences of punishment can actually lead to increased crime. A collateral consequence being one that is not handed down by a judge but is the result of another law, policy, regulation, etc.. For example, if you are arrested for DWI the judge may sentence you to 30 days in jail. The collateral consequence is that your driver's license may be suspended by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
If you are arrested and convicted of a felony drug charge, serve your time, and get out a collateral consequence can be that no one will hire you because of your conviction. Many states, counties, and cities are starting to realize this actually creates more crime and are passing Ban the Box laws that prohibit asking about criminal convictions on job applications and delay background screening.
I find it very disturbing that this is not included the basis of legislation and investigated further.
"Research to date generally indicates that increases in the certainty of punishment, as opposed to the severity of punishment, are more likely to produce deterrent benefits."
I am not saying that plea deals are all bad or that they should be eliminated. I think they serve a purpose with first time offenders or to secure testimony in cases where there are significantly bigger stakes. But some plea deals are just absolutely absurd and destroy the certainty of punishment. If people knew that there were guaranteed consequences I think we could reduce jail sentences to some extent. Instead we have increased jail sentences because we have increased the plea deals. What used to be a guaranteed 30-day sentence now has turned into 90-days because with the plea deal and good time the person will only serve the original 30 days.
The right to vote is taken away under the auspices of having broken a social contract by committing a crime. But taking away the right to vote is also tearing up that social contract. Is your response to someone breaking a contract to tear up the contract?
It is not a deterrent (the death penalty it seems, for some, is not even a deterrent). But even if it were, it would be a pretty fucking dumb deterrent, as deterrents go.
And surely someone under the direct control of the state should have more of a say, not less, in who runs that state. Voting in prison should be mandatory.
In the US
anyway, I am Australian.
* Voting is a right
* not-voting is a right
If that's the reason, then it's doing a piss-poor job at deterring crime - the US incarceration rate is around five times that of other western democracies (and 10 times that of places like Norway)
We live in a society where punishment for breaking the law becomes a moving goal post. Offenders are set up to fail in reentry in the US legal system, thus the high recidivism rates we experience. Fortunately there are many programs that are working to reverse this trend, but the fact of the matter is that until we stop moving the goal post on when the punishment ends the problem will never be 100% solved.
Fixed it for you. The fact that the states strip prisoners (or even ex-prisoners) of the right to vote is just fucking astounding.