In the hole of American democracy

Illustration: Cédric Gagnon Le Devoir In some states, an ex-convict must pay high fees or obtain a pardon from the governor to be allowed to vote again.

Marco Bélair-Cirino In New Orleans, Louisiana

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• United States

The American democratic experiment has been an object of fascination since its inception. Pretending to study the penitentiary system, French magistrates and aristocrats Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont traveled across the United States in 1831 and 1832 to get a closer look. They observed not only “its inhabitants, its cities, its institutions, its customs,” but also “the mechanism of its republican government.” Tocqueville wrote two iconic works from this 10-month stay: Democracy in America and Fifteen Days in the Desert. Le Devoir followed in their footsteps, 193 years later, at a time when this democracy seems more threatened than ever.

New stop: New Orleans, Louisiana, long the world champion of imprisonment.

Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were disgusted to see “men mixed up pell-mell with pigs, in the midst of all the filth and filth” during their visit to the New Orleans prison during the first days of 1832. “By locking up criminals, we do not think of making them better, but only of taming their wickedness; we chain them up like wild beasts; we do not correct them, we brutalize them,” they note in the report Penitentiary system in the United States and its application in France.

The report of the two Frenchmen caused a stir. He even urges New Orleans authorities to reduce prison overcrowding somewhat by developing alternative detention facilities, Historic New Orleans Collection museum guide Kurt Owens tells a few visitors huddled around him.

“It’s important that we don’t try to solve anything here today,” Owens warns, after taking great care to construct a positive space (“ safe space”) that allows everyone who follows him to be “comfortable” during their visit to the exhibition A Captive State, provided they have the “best intentions.” ».

Nearly 200 years after Tocqueville and Beaumont's stay, the living conditions of Louisiana's defendants and prisoners remain extreme. The temperature hovered near 55 degrees Celsius during the summer in the mega-penitentiary located on the site of the former Angola plantation in the northeast of the state.

“The institutions of slavery and mass incarceration are historically linked” in this territory that has passed through the hands of France (1682-1762), Spain (1762-1800), France (1800-1803) and the United States (1803-), Kurt Owens says calmly in the middle of the exhibition.

Also in this series

• Cayugas and Senecas Want to Be Masters in Their Own House
• Workers (and Voters), Unite!
• Harmonizing Earth with Sky
• The American South, an Open-Air Museum of the Struggle for Equality

In fact, men incarcerated in the “Alcatraz of the South” — the largest maximum-security detention facility in the United States — are forced to plant and harvest cabbage, corn, okra, soybeans, wheat, and other crops without adequate tools or safety equipment, according to The Promise of Justice Initiative, an anti-mass incarceration group, which sees these efforts as punishment rather than rehabilitation for authorities.

50,000 Louisianans behind bars

Louisiana ranks second in the world for its incarceration rate (1,067 per 100,000 inhabitants), just behind El Salvador (1,086 per 100,000 inhabitants) and far ahead of Canada (88 per 100,000 inhabitants), according to the Prison Policy Initiative. “Louisiana locks up a higher percentage of its population than any other [state, and indeed any] independent democratic country on the planet,” the American nonpartisan NGO dedicated to “highlighting the harmful effects of mass criminalization” bluntly emphasizes.

In Louisiana, a person could languish in prison after being convicted of a crime by a majority of a jury (9 out of 12, then 10 out of 12), until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that guilty verdicts must be unanimous in criminal trials, regardless of the state in which they are held.

Black people are vastly overrepresented in the prison population. They make up less than a third of Louisiana’s population, but two-thirds of the population behind bars.

“What they’re doing now, systematically, is they’re keeping you in prison, with mandatory minimum sentences. “If you don’t have the right lawyer, you get twice as much time in prison as someone else,” said Turone Sledge, an African-American from Cleveland on vacation in the American South. “Someone like Trump can commit 34 felonies in a day. If I commit 34 felonies, you’ll never see me again.”

Deprived of liberty, deprived of vote

In the United States, people charged with or convicted of a crime are disenfranchised as soon as they are incarcerated, except in Washington, D.C., Maine, and Vermont.

In some states, they are also disenfranchised while on probation or parole.

More than 4.6 million Americans convicted of a crime were disenfranchised in the 2022 midterm elections, including a disproportionate number of Black and Latino citizens.

Photo: Marco Bélair-Cirino Le Devoir In the United States, people accused or convicted of a criminal act are stripped of their right to vote as soon as they are incarcerated, except in Washington D.C., Maine and Vermont.

In Canada, incarcerated citizens can vote by special ballot in an election or referendum, the country’s highest court ruled in 2002.

Met in a corner of the United States where everyone knows someone who is or has been incarcerated, Al will not be able to participate in the elections on November 5. “I can’t vote. I’m a criminal,” the black man says bluntly. “There are a lot of things to do to get the right to vote back.” “It doesn't happen overnight,” he continues, accompanied by his young adult son, Al, the third of the name.

In some states, an ex-convict must pay a hefty fee or obtain a pardon from the governor to be allowed to vote again.

This is part of our Perspectives section.

That said, 26 states have extended voting rights to about 2 million prisoners or ex-prisoners since 1997. Despite this gentle wind of reform, the fight to regain the ability to vote seems secondary for many, including Al.

The ex-con wonders aloud who and what he would vote for this fall, if he had the chance. “It can’t be ‘for freedom.’ People like my son and me are still getting killed for nothing. Freedom will probably never come,” the believer says, before adding, “I don’t think black people will have a chance on this earth until God comes back and saves us.” His son nods in agreement.

Equality in Powerlessness

Inside the Historic New Orleans Collection museum, students from Frederick Douglas High School peer incredulously at a reconstructed cell showing conditions in state jails. “It's awful,” one of them said.

Nearby, guide Kurt Owens shows off one of the quilts made and sold by men incarcerated without parole at Angola to raise money to provide services to their fellow inmates at the end of their lives. In the United States, more than 4,000 people were dying in prison each year at the turn of the 2020s, before COVID-19 hit America.

Then, the guide leads visitors into a conference room where they can finally “take action” to improve the lot of prisoners and ex-prisoners: by signing a petition to end plantation prisons, to convince members of Congress to repeal the exclusion clause from Medicare and Medicaid programs that affects incarcerated people, to “remove the box” about criminal history from job applications, which would increase “the chances” of ex-prisoners getting a job…

In the absence of action, American prisons will continue to offer the sad spectacle of “the most complete despotism” observed by Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont almost 200 years ago.

The civil and criminal legislation of the Americans recognizes only two means of action: imprisonment or bail. The first act of a procedure consists in obtaining bail from the defendant, or, if he refuses, in having him incarcerated; the validity of the title or the gravity of the charges is then discussed. It is obvious that such legislation is directed against the poor, and only favors the rich. The poor do not always find bail, even in civil matters, and, if he is forced to go and await justice in prison, his forced inaction soon reduces him to misery. The rich, on the contrary, always manages to escape imprisonment in civil matters; moreover, if he has committed an offense, he easily evades the punishment which must befall him: after having furnished bail, he disappears.

— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund-Le Devoir.