Post-retributive felonial disenfranchisement in the United States should be abolished.

-We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. These words, of course, can be found in the Declaration of Independence, a document exerting massive influence on contemporary theories of law, finding special application in the United States. This passage makes it clear that the government is established to protect the natural rights of its citizens. Natural law is derived from the nature of man; that is, natural law acknowledges that in order for man to function in society, their rights as as self-protective, property-owning animals must be maintained. If a government does not uphold these standards, then they have ceased to be a just government. This, coincidentally, is why the Civil Rights movement was such a significant issue. While blacks had been freed from servitude, the law continued to arbitrarily conflict with their rights to exist as social and political animals within a democracy. The restoration of these rights through the granting of their right to vote served as a striking example of how important it is that man's right to exist a a political animal is maintained. My opponent's link to Megan's law is unfortunately broken. The definition of Megan's Law from Wikipedia is "an informal name for laws in the United States requiring law enforcement authorities to make information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders." My opponent must elaborate on how this conflicts with a person's natural rights as a social, political, and property-owning animal or as a maker of things. The dissemination of information regarding a person's crime is not in conflict with any of these rights. Furthermore, the effectiveness of such laws has been proven to be negligible. (Zgoba, Witt, Dalessandro, Veysey 2008.) When we consider the issue before us today, we must look towards either the retributive or protective theories of justice to determine why these persons were incarcerated. According to the retributive theory of justice, criminals are punished in order to "teach them a lesson". Incarceration and other restrictive forms of punishment are tantamount to deterrence for committing a crime and as a method of discouraging recidivism in released felons. According to the protective/social contract theory of justice, criminals are punished in order to protect the community. Punishment once again protects society by acting as a deterrent for crime and also seeks to remove criminals from society until they have been naturalized enough to successfully assimilate back into society. According to the protective theory of justice, post-retributive withholding of natural rights is counterproductive to the goal of integrating the released prisoner back into society (see below). A person's natural rights are only obstructed in the first place in order to protect the natural rights of society at large, and when these rights are restored it is implied that the criminal can responsibly use these rights to contribute to society. My opponent may argue that disenfranchisement acts as a deterrent for crime. This fails on two counts, the first being that there is no link between felon disenfranchisement and recidivism (Uggen, Manza 2007). The second point is that is has been demonstrated that of the small percentage of released felons who choose to participate in the democratic process actually have substantially lower rates of recidivism than those who either do not regain their voting rights or who choose not to vote (Chin 2007). Ultimately, systems of justice only restrict natural rights in order to protect those rights as held by the innocent public. Post-retributive disenfranchisement not only constitutes an arbitrary restriction of natural rights, but it is proven to be contradictory to the principles on which it was established.