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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Street who wrote (151913)	6/9/2001 3:41:54 PM
From: ThirdEye	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

1 in 3 blacks in Florida are felons-- Even if that figure is correct, the drug war isn't the main reason. The main reason is that the Republican controlled Florida legislature has spent years incrementally increasing the number of crimes classified as felonies in Florida. Even stealth bills have been proposed, increasing the sentences from 365 days to 366 days for misdemeanors, in an attempt to reclassify these crimes as felonies if those bills had passed. Florida also ranks first in the nation--first-- in youth arrests for felonies. Felons do have the option of petitioning the state for restoration of their civil rights after they have completed sentences and/or parole. But the state office handling those petitions doesn't pay much attention to them. Between the blizzard of papers they throw at applicants requiring them to "prove" they deserve their rights back, and their rather broad and notoriously capricious powers that permit them to deny petitions for offenses as small as traffic violations, only 6% of petitions have been granted. So Florida gets'em comin' and goin'. More and more crimes are felonies and an impossible bureucratic hurdle on top of that, all of which permits you to say 1 in 3 blacks in Florida are felons.