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For Immediate Release
June, 28 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
David Vance, (202) 736-5712 dvance@commoncause.org
New Report Examines the Business of Mass Incarceration and the Damage it Does to Democracy
WASHINGTON
Today, Common Cause issued a new report examining how corrections industry influence, felony disenfranchisement and prison gerrymandering fuel mass incarceration and undermine democracy. Democracy Behind Bars looks at our broken criminal justice system and how it is manipulated for the benefit and profit of the prison industry. The report goes on to examine the work going on in the states to restore voting rights to citizens who have served their time and to curb mass criminalization and incarceration.
"Americans expect and deserve a true participatory democracy, but millions of citizens have found themselves stripped of their right to vote even after they have served their sentences," said Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause President. "Mass criminalization and incarceration, and those who profit from it, continue to undermine our democracy. But at the state level, voters and legislators are taking the initiative and moving to reform the system and repair the damage it has done to our democracy."
A video highlighting the report's findings is available here. As the report emphasizes, the American criminal justice system "is influenced by many of the same political forces that distort and corrupt other areas of government policy and action: the influence of special interest money in elections and lobbying of our elected officials, partisan disputes over voting rights and redistricting, abuses of power, and ethical breaches."
"Mass incarceration has risen to levels that break our democracy," said Aleks Kajstura, Legal Director, Prison Policy Initiative. "The report rightly highlights issues such as prison gerrymandering - the practice of counting incarcerated people at the location of the prison rather than at home for redistricting. This means that representation is granted based on the size of the prisons rather than the number of actual residents. Through prison gerrymandering, mass incarceration creates pervasive vote dilution that extends to cover most Americans."
"With the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, the mass criminalization of our citizens is a defining issue of our time," said Keshia Morris, Common Cause Census & Mass Incarceration Project Manager. "One in thirty-five adults in this country have been under correctional supervision, but that number swells exponentially in our nation's poorest regions and neighborhoods. Prison industry influence, felony disenfranchisement and prison gerrymandering are part of how we got here."
One in thirty-five adults in this country have been under correctional supervision, prison industry influence, felony disenfranchisement and prison gerrymandering are part of how we got here.
Democracy Behind Bars examines a variety of factors that contribute to including:
- Felony Disenfranchisement
- Prison Gerrymandering
- Corrections Industry Money in Politics
- Incentives for Over-Policing
- The Opportunities for Influence-Buying in Prosecutorial & Judicial Elections
- The Adverse Impacts of Industry Influence on the Prison Population
The report release featured a panel of advocates and experts including Marc Howard, director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University, Aleks Kajstura of the Prison Policy Initiative, Nicole Porter of The Sentencing Project and Davon Woodley, who has devoted his life since his release from prison to helping former incarcerated persons readjust to society. The event will be livestreamed on the Common Cause Facebook page at 10 a.m. today and a recording will be available after.
The report was written by Joe Maschman, Common Cause Legal Fellow, with editing and other assistance from Keshia Morris, Census & Mass Incarceration Project Manager; Paul S. Ryan, Vice President for Policy and Litigation, and Dale Eisman, Senior Writer/Editor. Research assistance was provided by Common Cause interns Alex Brown, Sam Genova, Raulston Tiger Li, Nadja Linke, and Lily Oberstein. Kerstin Diehn was responsible for layout and design, Jack Mumby, Common Cause's deputy digital director, for website development and Kenneth Campell for video support.
To view the full report, click here.
To view a video highlighting the report click here.
To view the report release panel discussion, click here.
To view this release online, click here.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
(202) 833-1200LATEST NEWS
Dems Denounce Trump Official for Hiding Social Security Service Metrics
"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," said reads a letter led by Rep. Judy Chu.
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As the Trump administration pushes to cut 7,000 jobs held by federal employees at the Social Security Administration, the agency that oversees the crucial anti-poverty program for senior citizens and people with disabilities has made numerous efforts to disguise the customer service crisis that the cuts have caused—and Democrats on Monday demanded answers about what one progressive lawmaker recently denounced as a "cover up" to hide long wait times.
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) led 18 Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee in writing to Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, urging the former Wall Street executive to explain why several customer service metrics were deleted from the SSA's website just as Americans were facing longer wait times and a reduced ability to speak with customer service representatives rather than having their claims and questions handled through automation.
Chu spearheaded the letter weeks after the SSA stopped publishing more than 30 metrics related to the performance of its 1-800 number, retirement claims processing times, and disability decision reconsideration wait times.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance," wrote the Democrats. "We are concerned that this new menu is far less helpful for our constituents in knowing what to expect when interacting with SSA."
In addition to omitting crucial information about how long retirees and people with disabilities can expect to wait to receive their benefits or to talk to a representative, Chu noted that the metrics that are currently shown "seem designed to pressure beneficiaries to use online tools instead of talking to live people, an option that simply doesn't work for all beneficiaries, especially the very old and people in rural areas with poor Internet access."
"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," reads the letter.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance."
The letter was sent days after The Washington Post reported that the SSA is pulling staff from its field offices to act as customer service representatives for its 1-800 number following a surge in complaints about dropped calls and website crashes.
That change is likely to slow down responses to complicated claims cases that are often handled by field office staff, Jessica LaPointe, president of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Post.
"So it's just going to create a vicious cycle of work not getting cleared, people calling for status on work that's sitting because the claims specialists now are going to have to pick up the slack of the customer service representatives that are redeployed to the teleservice centers," LaPointe said last week.
Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, told the Post last month as the metrics were deleted from the SSA website that the Trump administration's attempts to conceal the effects of its mass layoffs would not succeed.
"People notice when they can't get an appointment because their local field office has lost half its staff. When checks and decisions are delayed. When they get the runaround from an AI chatbot on the phone, instead of getting to talk to a real person," said Lawson.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the agency for "playing musical chairs to try and fill in the gaps" and suggested Bisignano "stop gutting the critical workforce that helps Americans every single day."
Chu and the other Ways and Means Committee Democrats emphasized that the agency recently restored one metric to its new website: a chart showing the six-year trend of disability determination processing times.
"That the agency chose to cherry pick and restore only this metric," they wrote, "and not any of the others that had been removed, only deepens our concern about why your agency continues to keep hidden certain metrics that had previously been publicly available."
The Democrats demanded that the SSA restore "all the robust public data that the agency had previously reported prior to June 2025, including historical data, and to regularly update that data."
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After Passage of GOP Medicaid Cuts, Congress Debates Nearly $1 Trillion Military Budget
In a closed-door session last week, senators advanced legislation that would authorize $925 billion in military spending for the coming fiscal year.
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Fresh off the passage of a Republican budget measure that includes more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade, Congress this week is set to consider legislation that would authorize close to that same amount for the U.S. military for the coming fiscal year.
The House Armed Services Committee, controlled by Republicans, will mark up its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Tuesday. In a closed-door session late last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee advanced its military spending authorization package, which has a topline of roughly $925 billion for Fiscal Year 2026—an increase of around $30 billion compared to the current fiscal year.
Unlike the GOP reconciliation package that President Donald Trump signed into law earlier this month, the NDAA is likely to clear Congress with bipartisan support. Just one Democrat on the Senate armed services panel—Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—voted against advancing the legislation out of committee last week.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the NDAA "a critical, bipartisan measure that ensures our military remains prepared to meet the growing and complex challenges of a dangerous world."
The $925 billion Senate NDAA topline does not include the more than $150 billion Pentagon boost that Republicans inserted in their partisan reconciliation package for fiscal year 2025, pushing the nation's approved military spending above $1 trillion for the year. Trump has openly bragged about his push for a $1 trillion military budget.
"This militarized MAGA agenda harms working families and our communities," Lindsay Koshgarian and Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project said following passage of the GOP reconciliation bill. "It will be paid for with cuts to programs that help people meet their basic needs and will disproportionately benefit private contractors, further enrich billionaires, and exacerbate waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars."
Breaking Defense noted that the Senate NDAA proposes "an increase of Air Force F-35 procurement from 24 to 34 jets—a sum that, if enacted, would take the [Pentagon's] annual total to 57 jets." Watchdogs have long described the F-35 program as a ridiculous boondoggle.
Lawmakers are set to consider another increase in annual military spending following the release of a report estimating that more than half of the Pentagon's discretionary spending between 2020 and 2024 went to private contractors.
The report, released by the Costs of War Project and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, notes that "the arms industry has used an array of tools of influence to create an atmosphere where a Pentagon budget that is $1 trillion per year is deemed 'not enough' by some members of Congress." Such tools include lobbying and sizable campaign contributions.
"The vast bulk of the arms industry's campaign contributions go to candidates for Congress," the report observes. "The industry favors incumbents, and concentrates much of its giving to members of the armed services committees and defense appropriations subcommittees in the House and Senate—the members with the strongest role in shaping the Pentagon budget."
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In Act of 'Brutal Sadism,' Israel Bans Gazans From Entering Sea Under Pain of Death
"This is not about security," said the head of Gaza's fishers' union. "It's economic, social, and psychological warfare, a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation."
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Israel has warned Gazans to stay out of the Mediterranean Sea or risk getting killed under wartime restrictions that critics say serve no security purpose and are meant to deprive Palestinians of a key source of sustenance—and respite from the horrific realities of 21 months of constant death and destruction.
"Strict security restrictions have been imposed in the maritime area adjacent to Gaza—entry to the sea is prohibited," Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on the social media site X Saturday. "This is a call to fishermen, swimmers, and divers—refrain from entering the sea. Entering the beach and waters along the entire Gaza Strip endangers your lives."
While Israel has imposed a maritime blockade on Gaza since 2007 following Hamas' victory in legislative elections and subsequent takeover of the coastal enclave, restrictions were tightened after the October 7, 2023 attack as part of the "complete siege" that has caused deadly malnutrition throughout the strip, where Israel's 646-day U.S.-backed onslaught has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
However, the IDF appears to have not enforced the post-October 7 ban on entering the sea against swimmers and bathers. Only Palestinian fishers have been targeted, with more than 210 killed since October 2023, according to United Nations data.
"We live off the sea. If there's no fishing, we don't eat," Munthir Ayash, a 52-year-old fisher from Gaza City, told the Emirati newspaper The National Monday. "Me, my five sons, and their families—45 people in total—depend entirely on the sea. With it closed, we face starvation."
It is unclear why the IDF issued Saturday's warning, which came amid excessive heat warnings as temperatures rose to over 30°C (86°F). With Gaza's infrastructure obliterated by 21 months of Israeli onslaught and safe running water in severe shortage, the Mediterranean Sea provided a place to cool off and clean up.
"I used to go every day. The sea was where I bathed, where I relaxed, where I ran from the horror of war," Ibrahim Dawla, a 26-year-old Palestinian man forcibly displaced from Gaza City's Zaytun, told The National. "Now even that's gone."
Rajaa Qudeih, a 31-year-old mother of two from Deir al-Balah, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz Sunday: "I'm literally dizzy from hunger, thirst, and the heat. Gaza is going through the worst famine, we haven't eaten, and we can't even find a piece of bread."
"The sea was the only outlet left. If they kill us for going there, maybe that would be easier than this slow death," she continued. "Still, I fear for my children. My oldest is 9. How can I convince him that swimming in the sea could get him killed?"
"We are camped by the sea," Qudeih added. "Where else can we go? Are they going to ban the air from us next?"
The IDF claims the maritime blockade is a security measure aimed at preventing weapons from being smuggled into Gaza.
However, Zakaria Bakr, head of the Palestinian Fishermen's Syndicate in Gaza, and many other residents of the embattled enclave believe there is another reason why Israel is prohibiting them from entering the sea.
"This is not about security. It's economic, social, and psychological warfare; a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation," he told The National.
Dawla said that "people here die a million times every hour; we needed the sea just to feel human again, even if only for a few minutes. And they knew that. That's why they shut it down."
"We called it our last breathing space. We knew it was dangerous, but it was the only place we had left," he added. Now, "I haven't gone for two days. None of my friends have either. We're all afraid we'll be shot just for standing there."
Ayash said of Israel: "They want to take everything. They want to erase us."
"But the sea is ours," he added. "The land is ours. No matter how hard they try, it will stay ours."
Palestine defenders around the world also condemned the IDF policy.
"There can be no possible military or security reason for banning the people of Gaza from entering the sea—except to satisfy the brutal sadism of the IDF," argued Australian journalist and commentator Mike Carlton.
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