Texas Tough

A peculiar artifact of the severity revolution in criminal justice is that the United States has returned to a two-tiered model of citizenship, a sort of legally inscribed segregation in which convicted felons are permanently denied basic rights. We see this in extremely long sentences meted out to juveniles, felony disenfranchisement, and in the myriad legal restrictions placed on ex-cons upon their release. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of sex offenders, who in some jurisdictions are effectively banished from the free world forever, long after the expiration of their sentences. In the case of Miami, profiled in this New York Times piece, many ex-felons returning to society find they are permitted to reside only in an encampment under a bridge: a convict Bantustan in post-civil rights America.