Incarcerated People’s Views of (Partisan) Politics, Law, and Legitimacy

• In Event: Perceptions on Rights and Reform in American Corrections

Abstract

Imprisoned people have heightened awareness of the law; their confinement is justified by criminal law, and their daily lives are shaped by legally defined institutions. These realities are products of governance, partisanship, and ideology. Simultaneously, communities experiencing high levels of policing and incarceration are less likely to be engaged in electoral politics. Voter disenfranchisement of people with criminal records is an uneven but long-standing fact of United States politics (Cartagena, 2009; Miller & Spillane, 2012; White, 2022). Little is known about partisan/electoral understandings of US prisoners, although emerging information suggests complexity, including notable support for the Republican Party (Lewis et al., 2020, 2024). This paper will identify and analyze the legal and political consciousness of imprisoned people as represented through their first-person accounts shared in the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA), an online, open-access collection of essays written by incarcerated people. The study will consider how imprisoned people connect ideas of law and politics, including through topics such as the legitimacy or illegitimacy of their incarceration, elections, and economic or racial justice. Beyond imprisonment, these opinions shape how reentering citizens engage civically upon release (Smith & Kinzel, 2021; Yi et al., 2024).

Author

• Fran Lisa Buntman, George Washington University