VOTE | Voice of the Experienced Blog – the time to end mass incarceration is NOW.

FICPFM Submits Comments to the FTC on the Need for Fairness in Rental Housing Applications

RE: Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Rental Housing Fees Practices (Document Number 2026-04907)

Dear Chairman Ferguson,

We, the undersigned members of Formerly Incarcerated Convicted People and Families Movement (FICPFM) write to support and encourage your pursuit of fair rule making in the rental housing market. FICPFM is a national movement of seventy organizations across twenty six states. We are people directly impacted by mass incarceration and the lifetime of discriminatory policies impacting our lowered economic caste and infringed rights of citizenship. We work to educate the public and policymakers regarding systemic harms, and offer alternative proposals that reduce the primary drivers of crime, reduce recidivism, and elevate overall
community outcomes.

Our grassroots organizations have led multiple local and statewide rental housing campaigns for over a decade, including shifting the direction of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) towards inclusionary policies. We have experienced the digitization and dehumanization of the rental application process during a time when housing is increasingly concentrated in the hands of absentee corporate landlords. Their profit motives do not always align with community sustainability, while those rents flow away from the neighborhoods from where they came.

We have seen the rise of online platforms enabling short-term rentals. This reduces housing stock and drives up rents. Visitors replace neighbors and streets become less safe.

Finally, we have witnessed the rise of unfair, hidden, and deceptive practices in the rental application process. This system has become a racket, causing far more harm than the notorious flight, hotel and concert ticket pricing. The over-reliance of automated online platforms to rent housing is creating barriers for people who struggle with literacy, mental health, and other physical disabilities. Most significantly, blanket barriers for people with conviction histories remain.

Consumer choice is hidden behind a paywall.

The computer algorithms that make decisions in rental housing are programmed with rules and restrictions. Property managers and realtors direct people to apply through portals, as they themselves typically lack the discretionary power to rent a property. The application, inevitably, has a fee, typically a non-refundable $50 – $200. None of the restrictions are actually listed prior to spending money. Other than lotteries, we can think of no other product a person can purchase (in this case, a rental application) which can result in total failure.

Criminal records are an unseen omnipotent barrier. Over 100 million Americans have a criminal history, and millions more are impacted as household members. It is extremely rare for a rental advertising to mention convictions at all, and definitely never with the specificity that provides consumer guidance as to their eligibility. A student, for example, knows the criteria a college requires to be a strong applicant for limited seats. They also frequently receive fee waivers if requested. Housing merchants do not provide fee waivers, nor do they post their criteria.

There are a broad range of circumstances for the millions of people with felony convictions who seek housing. Some received probation for a petty offense and, in the course of a month, that conviction may have been used for their eviction prior to them going back into the rental market to find a new place to live. The recent nature of their conviction will often be held against them (and their entire family) by a computer program that never meets the prospective renter. The eviction will be held against them even where the conviction had absolutely nothing to do with their home or neighbors.

Others may have served a long sentence, whether for a violent crime or not, and may have been incarcerated since they were teenagers. Their lack of credit history will be held against them, as will the seriousness of the offense regardless of how long ago. Despite the natural growth and maturity of all humankind, a convicted person’s character becomes “frozen” by the computer systems and society for decades on end.

Renters with criminal histories are unable to put their own circumstances into eligibility criteria and decide if this is a waste of their time and money, or not. Taking applicants’ money, and then revealing their ineligibility, is a classic bait and switch. Many people have theorized that some apartment listings exist only to collect application fees. If so, this would be a fraudulent advertisement from a deceptive merchant in commerce.

Reducing housing access increases crime in America.

It is self-evident that people without a place to sleep are in volatile situations. It is difficult to take a shower, store clothes, affordably eat, and charge a phone; which makes it even harder to get and keep a job. The secret restrictions hidden behind application paywalls only impact people who actually have the money to rent an apartment. Typically, they have steady employment. Sometimes they have a spouse and/or children. These are the people some rental businesses are
forcing into desperation rather than allowing access to all people who can afford it.

Denying access discourages participation in society and encourages a “work-around” by whatever means necessary. Hotels and motels do not have background checks and computers deciding eligibility, yet a denied $1500 apartment would be replaced by an accepted $4500 motel for a month. Life is more expensive, and desperation for food and shelter should not be anyone’s motive for crime in any civilized nation. Instability impacts children as well, who are forced to live out of a suitcase, car, or a maze of shelters as their parent confronts faceless computers making decisions based on events occurring before the child was born.

Additionally, states and municipalities are creating more statutes that criminalize “public camping,” a phrase made popular by the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024), regarding the criminalization of having no home to sleep in. These efforts also criminalize people living out of their cars. Americans are increasingly being squeezed out of any place to live, and yet the prison gates are always open.

Over three million people currently live in the community while sentenced to probation. This is considered an “alternative to incarceration,” deemed appropriate by prosecutors and judges who felt a person’s accountability was best served in the community. Terms of their probation typically require their gainful employment and stable housing, and every judge across America either encourages or admonishes a person to “get it together.” But nobody tells the rental market.

Over a million people live in the community, after being released on parole. These people were reviewed by a government parole board, often with extremely strict criteria, and deemed safe to be given a chance prior to the eventual end of their full sentence. Typically, they need permission from their parole officer to move into a property; thus, there needs to be conversation between the property manager and the officer who must approve the apartment. Thus, a person (generally very low income) must pay an application fee, get approved by the property, then contact their officer to investigate the property and speak with the manager, then pay the rent, then move in. It should puzzle nobody when a property manager revokes the offer to rent the property because this is seen as “too much.”

Many jurisdictions now have courts that specialize in Veterans, Mental Health, Drugs, and Homelessness. They are generally creations of the state legislatures, and intended to create non-criminalization supportive services, yet sentencing someone to “probation” can impact their housing pursuits in the same manner as any other court. Housing providers who undermine public policy are contributing to criminal desperation rather than crime reduction.

Rental Property is commerce.

We have seen the lobbyists of rental marketeers subvert actual market forces through the hand of the governments. Very few marketeers are the “Mom ‘n Pop” landlords of old, where a second home is a rental property for a working family. Most own dozens, hundreds, even thousands of units. They put out false narratives about the danger of renting to someone with a criminal record, and seek to incite fear amongst neighbors yet still remain the only people opposing inclusive policy reforms.

The corporate landlord is often based across state lines, using nationwide providers of computer services for their application processing. They mention, yet fail to cite, these so-called legal liability cases where a landlord lets a person with a criminal record into an apartment building, who then commits a crime against a neighbor in the building, and the court holds the property owner liable. Their admissions policies should reflect that they are subject to commercial regulation, and should be sanctioned for unfairness or deception. They are not individuals seeking a preferable roommate.

Conclusion

If society has no place for the households with a criminal record who have the means to rent an apartment, how are we ever going to find pathways to success for the people who do not have the money to rent an apartment?

If we cannot fairly regulate commercial activity through good public policy, we leave our citizens to either file litigation (which is only successful to the extent courts reinforce inclusive housing policy and constitutional fairness). Many people, particularly those with little means, do not have genuine access to the court system. This leaves citizens to exercise their 1st Amendment rights of assembly and peaceful protest, and/or to become a market force such as boycotts, picket lines, shaming and otherwise impacting the commerce of discriminatory, unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent actors.

We encourage you to take a deep dive into the issue of hiding the criteria behind a paywall, using application fees as a money-making scheme, and the computer programs that use background checks to deny people housing with no rational relationship between criminal activity and being good tenants.

If the Commission wishes to better understand our issues, or in any way collaborate on furthering fairness in the rental market, please reach out to Bruce Reilly, our lead on the Housing4All campaign.

Sincerely,

David Ayala, Executive Director
Formerly Incarcerated Convicted People & Families Movement (FICPFM)
David@FICPFM.org

Bruce Reilly
FICPFM #Housing4All
Voice of the Experienced (Louisiana)
Bruce@VoiceoftheExperienced.org

“I Was Born Into Resistance” Staff Spotlight | Sara Louis-Ayo

I was born into resistance.

In 1989, Sudan fell under a military regime. Six months later, my mother went into labor during the curfew. She and my aunt were stopped at gunpoint near Kubri kobar (Bridge) while trying to reach the hospital. Soldiers screamed at them to stay put. We were not allowed to pass until morning. My aunt later told me she still doesn’t know how my mother survived that night or how I survived being born into it.

That is how my life began: in chaos, fear, and defiance.

My father was a political activist who was forced into exile. Growing up, I learned about uncles and neighbors who were jailed, disappeared, or executed. Others fled to neighboring countries and we don’t know if they are alive or gone. Political violence wasn’t something I read but my lived in my family.

Our journey to the United States was not easy. We crossed borders from Sudan into Egypt. I remember the desert and the warmth of the Nile. I remember mostly women and children. I remember silence and survival. When I finally arrived here, I carried that journey with me the borders crossed, the languages that failed me, the constant feeling of being “other.”

One thing was always clear: I am a Black refugee woman living in the South. Everything was at stake.

I used to dream about what justice looked like. Someone once asked me what “radicalized” me. The truth is, I didn’t know what to do with my grief except to speak out. I thought about the men in my family who were jailed or killed. Silence was never an option (I repeat this to myself quietly even today in rooms where injustice is loud, but the space was never designed for me to speak up)

My first protest was after the death of Sandra Bland. It was also the first time I experienced police violence directly. One officer stopped me, then called others over. They surrounded me. I was handcuffed, threatened with jail, and asked how I “got here” whether I swam from Africa to Louisiana. They laughed as they questioned my presence in this country and told me they couldn’t wait for ICE to take me. I was a U.S. citizen at the time.

What makes this moment even more terrifying and clarifying is that I later saw one of those same officers inside the 19th Judicial District Court while I was observing court. In that moment, I understood something deeply: this is not abstract. These are the same people who police our streets, fill our jails, and decide who is treated as human.

That encounter broke something in me, but it also anchored me. It showed me exactly why I fight and why I choose to fight the way I do.

In Louisiana, punishment is treated as a solution to everything. Mental health crises are met with handcuffs. Poverty is met with cages. People are locked in pretrial detention not because they are a danger, but because the system is easier than care.

And I know what it means to build something different.

VOTE exists to shift power back to communities to organize where harm happens, to heal where violence has been normalized, and to demand solutions rooted in truth and dignity.

Intersectionality: criminal justice and immigration

Because of how policing, immigration enforcement, and the criminal legal system collide, harm in our communities doesn’t happen in separate silos as it happens at the intersections. What I experienced on that street was not just police violence; it was a moment where criminalization and immigration stigma met in real time.

Across the United States and especially here in Louisiana the systems that are meant to “protect” people are more likely to detain them. Louisiana has become one of the states with the largest immigration detention presence, with multiple ICE facilities (8; there is one being considered in Port Allan) operating across the state and holding thousands of people. Researchers and local advocates describe Louisiana as a major hub of immigration detention, second only to Texas in the number of detainees held statewide and several of these facilities house people under contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

At the same time, the national narrative that immigration enforcement focuses on “the worst of the worst” doesn’t match the data. According to federal compilations of ICE statistics, over 70% of people in ICE detention as of late 2025 had no criminal conviction at all. Many are held solely because of civil immigration violations or minor offenses, not violent crimes. ICE arrests statewide have surged in recent years, often sweeping up people who are not charged with serious crimes.

This is the moment where the criminal legal system and immigration enforcement overlap in the most harmful way: police, jails, and federal detention work together to funnel human beings’ neighbors, parents, workers into cages, often without serious criminal histories. This is not ambivalent; it is a choice of systems that prioritize enforcement over care and detention over dignity.

This is the harm I live with and resist every day. Because real safety and justice do not come from detention cages or policing that sees people as threats. They come from community-rooted solutions that center dignity, mental health, and healing, not punishment. And that is why our work with VOTE and the Unjustified campaign goes beyond voter registration. We are confronting the truth of these interconnected systems and building alternatives that treat people as whole human beings, not problems to be managed.

Through VOTE and our Unjustified campaign, we center community healing and tell the truth about harm. We call out systems that rely on punishment instead of dignity. We push back on the lie that safety comes from jails.

Real safety comes from mental health support. From community-led solutions. From treating people as human beings, not case numbers or threats.

This work is personal to me. I am an impacted family member across criminal justice and immigration harm. I know what it means to fear a traffic stop, a jail call, or a knock at the door. I know what it means to be Black, targeted, and disposable in the eyes of the system.

This is not abstract to me. The harm created by these systems is something I carry with me, and resisting it is the work I choose every day. That is why VOTE and the Unjustified campaign are not about surface-level participation, but about real transformation. We name the truth about systems that default to punishment, and we invest in community-led solutions that prioritize dignity, healing, and safety without relying on cages.

I was born under guns and curfews. I crossed borders to survive. Those experiences taught me early that systems do not automatically protect people like me. Change only comes when communities organize, demand better, and build something new. This work is how I bring that truth into the light, and how, with your partnership, we create a future rooted in care, accountability, and justice.

Post Authored By Sara Louis-Ayo

The Cage is the Same: VOTE Statement Against ICE

We, the staff and leadership of Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), are based in Louisiana, a state built on stolen land and forced labor. We are led by people who have lived through incarceration and its long shadow. Our families, our histories, and our bodies carry the marks of systems built to control, extract, and disappear people deemed disposable.

What we are witnessing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Louisiana and across the country is not about public safety. It is state-sanctioned violence.

Policing, incarceration, detention and deportation are not separate systems. They are coordinated parts of the same machinery, designed to control, confine, and disappear people under the guise of law and order. It is the same punishment machine that has caged Black, poor and working-class people for generations, now accelerated and repackaged around a new target.

We are seeing this machinery operate in real time. ICE terror, aggressive policing, and large-scale immigrant detention are not isolated incidents. They are the strategy to implement ethnic cleansing. ICE is flooding communities with newly recruited agents lured by bonuses and fast placement, many with minimal training and unchecked authority over people’s lives. These agents implement brazen racial targeting, and sweeps moving from city to city, from New Orleans to Chicago to Minneapolis. They raid homes and businesses without warrants and are armed to the teeth. They escalate traffic stops into violence and arrest. Their deployment is often accompanied by the National Guard.

Communities are being openly terrorized. Our neighbors are being hunted and kidnapped from neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and immigration proceedings. Families are being driven into hiding and forced to withdraw from daily life. Children have stopped going to school. People are now avoiding hospitals, jobs, and public spaces altogether. Witnesses and protestors to this rising authoritarianism have been met with state-sanctioned intimidation, violence, and lethal force. We are being told not to believe what we are seeing with our own eyes.

This is not public safety. This is abusive state power that is disappearing people in plain sight, enforced through fear, force, and violence.

Louisiana sits at the center of this machinery not because this state has more immigrants, but because it already had the carceral machinery to exploit. For generations, Louisiana has built an economy around punishment and a business out of cages. When the language shifts from “war on drugs” to “tough on crime” to “immigrant detention and deportation,” the violence always stays the same. When the state takes your body, cages you, moves you far from your people, and controls your future without your consent, that is the American carceral system. The words change. The harm does not.

In 2017, the Justice Reinvestment Initiative was passed to reduce the Louisiana prison population. It worked. Thousands of prison beds were cleared and millions of taxpayer dollars were saved. That should have meant closing prisons. Instead, empty beds became an invitation. The state went looking for a new market and new people to fill it. First, they brought people from other states. Now they are filling those same beds with our immigrant brothers and sisters. Louisiana has a history of doing this: the immigration detention center at Jena was once a juvenile detention center.

Federal enforcement chose Louisiana because the state’s jail and prison network could be repurposed to serve an expanding deportation regime. The 1,600-bed  Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, once a state prison, now operates as one of the largest ICE detention facilities in the country. Alexandria has become a major deportation hub, with routine deportation flights leaving from a regional airport few people ever think about. ICE has proposed building massive detention facilities on the Northshore, designed to fast-track deportations at scale, treating human beings like inventory in a warehouse.

Immigration enforcement has never been about safety. It has always been about profit and control. Federal custody of immigrants pays more than state custody of incarcerated people, so sheriffs, politicians, and private prison companies chase “capacity” and “infrastructure.” Through 287(g) agreements, now spreading across Louisiana, local law enforcement become deputized as immigration agents, and are rewarded financially for feeding people into the deportation pipeline. Taxpayer dollars are used, with interest, to build cages, locking future generations into debt while schools, healthcare, and coastal restoration are left to collapse. Every bed in this system is a business decision. Every transfer is a contract. Every expansion is a choice.

We see the consequences up close. Look at East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, people are over incarcerated, neglected, and have died in a jail meant for pretrial detention. That is why VOTE Baton Rouge Organizers launched the Unjustified campaign, to expose the human, financial, and moral costs of this system and fight for safety rooted in care, not punishment. Now they want to build that jail even bigger. Bigger does not mean safer. Bigger means more bodies, more neglect, more profit.

Look at Angola State Penitentiary, an 18,000-acre plantation prison. Camp J was its most notorious solitary and disciplinary unit, so brutal that even staff refused to work there. A federal judge declared it unconstitutional and uninhabitable, and it was shut down. Today, it has been repainted, renamed Camp 57, and reopened to hold “the worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants detained in the federal system. Same land. Same cages. New target.

From inside Angola, one man shares:

“Camp J, once a condemned property, is now being reopened for ICE to pack immigrants into the once infamous disciplinary camp… I don’t know how their medical needs will be met in a system already declared unconstitutional. This feels like a violation of both immigrants’ and prisoners’ civil liberties.”

This system survives by convincing us we are separate from another. That one group can be sacrificed to protect another. But we know the truth. When they build cages for one, they are building cages for all of us. Any system designed to disappear one group will always go looking for the next.

As formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones, we know that control does not end at the prison gate. Probation, parole, surveillance, rearrest. The form changes. The power does not. That is why we recognize this system wherever it shows up.

If you build a system to disappear people for profit, it will always need new people to take. If you build the cages, they will fill them.

Louisiana incarcerates more people than almost any other state. That also means Louisiana holds enormous collective power. More people who know this system. More families who have felt its harm. More communities ready to resist. VOTE calls this unification process ‘waking the sleeping giant’: When everyone touched by incarceration and state violence realizes our shared power, this system cannot stand.

The cage is the same.
And our liberation is tied together.

Standing Up for Fair Housing: A Response to HUD’s Rollback on Criminal History Guidance

In November 2025, HUD Secretary Scott Turner issued a letter to Public Housing Authorities and private owners that rescinded decades of guidance on how criminal arrests and convictions should be considered in housing decisions. This dramatic policy shift threatens to destabilize families, increase homelessness, and undermine years of progress toward fair and evidence-based housing access.

For Louisiana—the most incarcerated state in the nation—the stakes couldn’t be higher. That’s why housing advocates, legal aid organizations, and community partners across the state are speaking out. Below is the letter being sent to Public Housing Authorities throughout Louisiana, urging them to maintain fair housing practices despite the federal rollback.

Dear Public Housing Authorities, 

The following organizations write to share with you our concerns about HUD Secretary Scott Turner’s November 25th letter to Public Housing Authorities and private owners of project-based rental assistance. HUD has rescinded all prior guidance regarding criminal convictions and arrest records. This decision casts aside decades of progress toward fair, evidence-based affordable housing access for people with criminal arrests and convictions.  In response, we offer the following information and perspective: 

HUD’s own mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination and transform the way HUD does business. 

This mission can’t be met if entire families are denied housing because a family member has a past conviction, an arrest that never resulted in a finding of guilt, or a history of substance use.  

You see daily, through your work, how closely housing insecurity is tied to the criminal legal system. Our state has made intentional commitments towards rehabilitative and public health approaches to addiction, mental illness and physical disabilities. Our housing policy should not diverge from these efforts, as safe, stable housing is central to sustainability. 

Louisiana is the most incarcerated (and formerly incarcerated) jurisdiction in the world. Even more Louisianans have been sentenced to forms of “alternative” supervision, such as probation, where judges and prosecutors hope to see people, and their families, succeed when sentenced to less than jail time.  The direction suggested by HUD’s letter would lead to an unnecessary (and difficult to reverse) spike in homelessness, destabilize families, and work against court-ordered goals for rehabilitation and public safety.  

Additionally, basing housing decisions on arrests alone violates both the presumption of innocence and right to Due Process. Championing outdated “One Strike” policies, as in the recent HUD letter, not only removes discretion from local decision-makers, but also creates a heartless program that will result in devastating, and often irreversible, family separation. Additionally, these policies expose PHAs and owners to increased risk of litigation and community pushback. 

Our federal, state, and local governments have been building programs to reduce discrimination, support reentry, and keep families unified. Nothing in the Secretary’s letter requires you to abandon those efforts. You retain broad authority to

adopt policies that promote community safety and lean into building “inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination.” 

Please notify us of any upcoming proposals to revise your Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policies (ACOP), Housing Voucher Administrative Plans, or related screening and termination standards. This allows us, and our partners across the state, to provide input and support policies that meet HUD’s mission while protecting the stability of Louisiana’s families.   

Thank you for your continued work and your commitment to safe, inclusive communities.  

Sign On Organizations Include:  

ACLU of Louisiana, Sarah Whittington, Advocacy Director 
Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance 
Housing Louisiana 
Housing NOLA 
Louisiana Parole Project 
Operation Restoration 
Power Coalition for Equity and Justice 
StepUp Louisiana 
UNITY of Greater New Orleans 
Vera Institute of Justice 
Voice of the Experienced 
Voters Organized to Educate

Even The Accused Have Voting Rights

Jan 13th 2026| New Orleans Times-Picayune, Editorial Board Opinion

“Some violations of civil rights occur not by design but by situations unforeseen by the law’s designers. When this happens, the correct response is to fix the law without fuss.

That’s what Louisiana lawmakers should do in the case of people who are in jail, but not yet tried for alleged crimes, who are not allowed to vote. Unless and until they are convicted, their right to vote and their practical ability to do so must not be infringed.

Even if only a tiny subset of the population is denied its legal right to vote, provision must be made to preserve that right.

A group called Voice of the Experienced filed suit Dec. 12 in the state’s 19th Judicial District Court about this problem. State laws intended to guard against voter fraud require voters who register online or by mail to cast their ballots in person if they’ve never voted before. Exceptions are made for the disabled and military personnel deployed away from home, among others.

Whether such a restriction is wise or necessary is subject to debate, but a one-time in-person rule is no more unusual than a requirement for someone to show up in person for a first driver’s license. The civil rights problem arises only in the law’s application to those in jail awaiting trial.

Because they are in jail, it is the state itself that is keeping them from showing up in person to vote. They are literally not free to comply with his particular voting law. Yet, at the same time, the combination of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution makes it incontrovertible that, as unconnected citizens, they have absolute rights to vote.

Especially in a state that features jurisdictions with among the longest pre-trial incarcerations in the country – at some risk, by the way, of violating the Sixth Amendment’s right to a speedy trial – the problem of unconvicted inmates being unable to vote is very real. For example, the suit filed last month names Rachael Day, who has been awaiting trial for more than six years for alleged involvement in an armed robbery that turned deadly.

If Day did commit the crime, she deserves the punishment she would receive. But she should not lose her rights for a single week, much less for six years, without having her day in court.

To fix the problem would be easy. All lawmakers must do is add “unconnected people awaiting trial” to the list of exceptions (disabled, military) to the law requiring first-time voters to appear in person. After all, because they are in the state’s custody, the state already can verify their identities, which makes the possibility of voter fraud entirely moot.

It’s a simple problem with a simple fix, and lawmakers need to start fixing it on the very first day of the next session.”

Originally Published in print on January 13, 2026 in the New Orleans Times Picayune Opinion section as the Letter From The Editor (https://www.nola.com/opinions/our_views/editorial-even-the-accused-have-voting-rights/article_81a87b30-3b1a-4567-87f5-f90f853c1962.html)

Challenging Louisiana’s Illegal Barriers for First Time Voters in Jail

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) and an incarcerated first-time voter in a case challenging laws which bar eligible, first-time voters in East Baton Rouge jail from voting. Many people in jail are eligible to vote, such as those who are pre-trial or serving misdemeanors, which usually do not affect voting rights. This right to vote is protected under state and federal constitutions. But for some jailed voters in Louisiana, this constitutional promise is impossible to fulfill. Read more on this loophole that silences voters here.

Campaign Legal Center and Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) Challenge Laws in Louisiana that Disenfranchise First-Time Voters in Jail

EAST BATON ROUGE, La. — On Thursday, December 11, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), on behalf of Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) and an incarcerated first-time voter, filed a lawsuit challenging contradictory Louisiana laws that deny ballot access for first-time voters in jail, despite explicit constitutional protections guaranteeing them the right to vote.

Under the Louisiana Constitution, every eligible voter has the right to cast a ballot. That includes people in jail who are awaiting trial and presumed legally innocent, as well as those serving sentences for misdemeanor convictions that do not affect their voting rights. But Louisiana’s conflicting laws make that constitutional promise impossible to fulfill.

Here’s the issue:

One set of state laws requires first-time voters to cast a ballot in person.
Another set of state laws requires voters in jail to vote absentee.
The combination of these laws means that first-time voters in jail have no way to cast a ballot.

This is an impossible bind. First-time voters in jail can’t vote in person, and they can’t vote absentee. They are locked out entirely.

Louisiana’s first-time voting requirement is not unique to jailed voters. Many other people may struggle to vote in person, like those with disabilities or students away at college. The law allows for these individuals to vote absentee for the first time if they provide paperwork showing their identity and the reason why they can’t vote in person. But there’s no such exception for jailed voters, even though the sheriff can verify their identity and incarceration status.

“Most folks don’t even know they still have the right to vote if they are in jail. Once they find out they’re eligible, they take the effort to be a civically engaged citizen because they want to be part of their community, and they want their voice heard,” said Checo Yancy, policy director at VOTE, who has organized registration drives attended by over 100 people in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison (Jail). “The men and women in the jail are excited to vote in elections that impact them, but then Louisiana blocks them if it’s their first time voting. That makes no sense. It should not be this hard for people who are eligible and trying to do the right thing.”

“When we talk about voting rights for people in jail, we’re talking about real people in our communities who want to participate and are being denied because the state won’t fix a problem it has known about for years,” explains Norris Henderson, executive director at VOTE. “Louisiana’s Constitution is clear: if you’re eligible to vote, you have the right to vote. But first-time voters in jail have no way to cast a ballot. This lawsuit is about making Louisiana keep its word and treating every voter with dignity. Democracy doesn’t stop at the jailhouse door.”

“The Louisiana Constitution is clear that all eligible voters have a right to exercise their freedom to vote, but Louisianans in jail who are voting for the first time have no avenue to do so,” said Kate Uyeda, legal counsel for voting rights at Campaign Legal Center. “Restricting access to the ballot denies voters the ability to make their voices heard. Campaign Legal Center and VOTE will be working to close this loophole because our democracy works best when everyone can participate.”

Louisiana should advance a democracy that includes all eligible voters, not one that systematically excludes people based on their circumstances. The Louisiana Constitution already affirms this principle; now the state must live up to it.

Follow the latest updates on this lawsuit via Campaign Legal Center’s case page.

“Angola is Smiling”: Inside Voices Respond to Calvin Duncan’s Historic Victory

Every week, our Mission Possible team stays connected with people on the inside, sharing updates, answering questions, and hearing directly about what’s happening behind the walls via JPAY. These exchanges shape our work and keep us rooted in the people most impacted by this system. On the week Calvin Duncan won as Clerk of Criminal District Court, Solomon B., writing from Angola, captured it perfectly:

“Angola is smiling as one of their own
is becoming legendary in his own right.”
– Solomon B.

Calvin Duncan didn’t just win an election; he rewrote what’s possible. The co-founder of the Angola Special Civics Project alongside Norris Henderson, Duncan spent years of wrongful incarceration inside Louisiana State Penitentiary turning cells into classrooms and cultivating a generation of advocates who would challenge the system from within. Now, he’ll help oversee the very court system that once confined him. They built a legacy of civic education and organizing that would ripple far beyond Angola’s walls and that legacy now sits at the helm of the Orleans Parish Clerk of Court’s office.

But perhaps no one grasps the full magnitude of this moment better than the people still inside—Calvin’s former students, his comrades in organizing, the men who walked the same yard and dared to believe that transformation wasn’t just rhetoric but reality.

When we shared the news through JPAY, their responses didn’t just congratulate a friend. They celebrated proof that the bars, literal and figurative, can be broken. They spoke of hope rekindled in a moment when hope felt scarce, of families they’ll now mobilize to vote, of improvised cookouts behind walls to mark a victory that belongs to all of them.

Here’s what they told us.

Yes! This is going to be the weekend to remember! I have to say that I’m beyond excited. I have already decided on how I will celebrate Calvin Duncan win and I’m going to have my very own cook out! You all understand how we improvise behind the walls.
Dewitt E.

Hey VOTE,

Congrats to Calvin! Truly a testament to the power of second chances and the good that can come out of Angola!
Surge S.

Well VOTE we see that you can.t keep a good man down… No matter how hard they try, the truth has its way of showing up at the time when needed. So let Calvin know all the men in Angola is very proud of his success. Even if they are not in tune with the times, sooner are later they will understand what it was all about.

So, keep up the good work and thank you all. One step at a time, it works.
Theodore M.

Hello FAM!

Angola is smiling as one of their own is becoming legendary in his own right. I have not seen this much excitement since Obama won the presidential election.

Smile!… for us here he is a very personal inspiration, someone whom bled, cried and sweated with. He knows first hand how our plight feels as he has walked in our shoes feeling at times seemingly defeated but to be as the Phoenix, rising from the ashes and rising he has along now with our hopes and dreams of one day seeing Angola as free men ready to join in the fight with him.
Solomom B.

Bismillah!

Greeting Fam., Calvin made history! I’m so excited for our comrade, he has cross a boundary that many are afraid to cross. I’ll try to give him a call to congratulate him properly, I’m sure there’s alot that he needs to do first. Keep me posted.
Carl B.

Congratulations Calvin; we are all collectively excited to welcome you as the new Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal District Court!

Letters From The Inside: What Are You Proud of This Year?

Every week, our Mission Possible team stays connected with VOTE members on the inside through JPAY, sharing updates, answering questions, and hearing directly about what’s happening behind the walls. These exchanges shape our work and keep us rooted in the people most impacted by this system.

This month, we asked our incarcerated members: What are you proud of this year?

Their answers reflect growth, grief, joy, faith, resilience, and the kind of everyday courage that rarely makes it past the prison gates. These are their words — in their own voices — shared with permission and offered to the community that has their back.

My biggest joy is helping those who cant help themselves.
Terrance J

This year I’m most proud of having the strength and the courage to keep standing after losing everything.
I’m proud that my losses wasn’t just losses, they were lessons learned and motivation for me to want better and do better. The pain I felt from letting myself down, ignited a fire that will forever burn because I’ve learned from experience.
Chris L

I’m thankful for another chance at life — to make right what I got wrong. A lot of my homeboys are gone, and there’s no second chance under the dirt. I’m thankful for my family, who never missed a beat or gave up on me, even when I was ready to give up on myself. And I have to mention VOTE, who’s been through the same struggle I’ve been in and made it through the storm, now being a voice for those of us who can’t always express our thoughts. I’m thankful for all the opportunities coming my way.
Joseph B

I have a lot to be proud of this year. I hugged my autistic daughter who is now 6years old for the first time in her life on a visit.I’m also proud of graduating from the New Men S.A.V.E. Program at Angola and I’m proud of having a relationship with God.I’m most proud of having the opportunity to dance with my two daughter’s age’s 6 and 9 at the God Behind Bars event Father Daughter Dance at Angola.
Donald R

Usually I’m an antisocial and shy person. I’m a part of a program here called Juvenile Awareness Program (J.A.P.). They bring in adolescents from area alternative schools and we give motivational speeches, perform skits, give testimonies, and do Q and A. I was chosen to be the narrator in last years skit and was nervous to the core. This past October we perform another skit for an alternative school and this time I chose to be the narrator. I wanted to overcome the fear I felt. I did it! No fear. Ever since, I’ve been feeling the confidence in me rise. I challenged myself and won. I know that seems to be a small feat, but if you knew me you would understand how great a feat it is.
Ortiz J

Even after 27 consecutive years of imprisonment, I still have not lost hope. This year my hope was renewed after I graduated from Ashland University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies. I became the first in my family to finish college. Since I am a tutor in this prisons literacy program, my students also feel that they too have accomplished something. And they have, as they motivated me every step of the way.
Walter W

I’m most proud of my decision making in impulsive, and crucial moments this year. As in the past I’ve failed myself for moviing without meaning, indulging in my frustration, anger. For now I’ve found a start of my purpose with understanding I’ve always been what has hindered me from excelling to my potential. I weight my decision making with aligning it towards my future. understanding the term of the
(5 P’s ) proper preparation prevents poor performance. listening to myself or surrounding, others taking heed to sematic issues. I am learning to love me, believe in me , allowing God into my life for I can do NOTHING WITHOUT THE GRACE OF GOD. Being incarcerated is not easy but I’m more free in my mental than I were when I had fredom. All praise be to God for slowing me down to listen, and learn, love … so I can One Day Live, and Not Just Be Living!
Dino M

There are many things I can say I’m proud of this year. My sobriety, prosperity, and my integrity. My sobriety was a demon that I’ve struggled with inside and outside these prison walls until I arrived to Hunt Corr. Ctr. and submitted to a program called (RDAP) that changed my life. My prosperity, came from this program and the help of mentors and my faith in Jesus Christ… it transformed me and I’ve prevailed with my anger and drug addiction to the point that I’m now a pro visionary mentor in training to help those struggling with what I’ve overcame. My sense of integrity had been a challenge in itself… ‘doing things right when no one is looking’… and believe it or not, someone is always looking. This what defines a persons character trait. These three things transformed me into the man I am today. Every morning I wake up,” I ask God whose life I’m go change today because changing one person life could make a difference in generations to come in that man’s life. No Surrender! No Retreat!
Ahmad M

I’m thankful for everything I experence in life good, painful, and bad because our Lord Jesus Christ die for it all. I’m walking around with a cane stick, I have fluid in my right knee down to my toes. Words of encouragement never let your circumstance stop you from moving foward in life. Stand on what you believe in, and put God first in everything you do, amen.
-Terrell B

Well this year was a good year, and i guess we could call it special to.I got my GED this year, it took two years but I enjoyed every minute of it. Hard work and not giving up is somthing I pick up,also a gang of people. A real good! Time.
-Errol F

More Than a Record: Jonas’s Fight for Opportunity and Dignity

By VOTE Members Julia Cass and Jonas Laurant

Jonas Laurant recently applied for a part-time job at a crisis center in Jefferson Parish. With a record of mostly addiction-related offenses and occasional incarceration in parish prisons, he knows the barriers to finding employment.

Sometimes, employers take a chance. He now works for the Metropolitan Health and Human Services District supporting men with mental health challenges after they leave the Orleans Justice Center. Other times, he makes it through interviews and even job offers—only to be told later that his background disqualified him. Once, he’d already bought winter clothes for a position up North before the rejection came.

Several times I’ve been offered jobs, only later to be notified that oh your background, your background, your background. I can’t change my past. All I can do is be the person that I am today you know and live on. I’m not the person that I was years ago, and I did my time you know. I shouldn’t have to pay for this for the rest of my life. There’s people out there being discriminated against for past transgressions that have nothing at all to do with the job at hand.

For the job in Jefferson Parish, which would be a step up from his current position, he was interviewed and the program officer called him later to say she was hoping to schedule him. A few days later, he got an email that listed his offenses and asked him to explain the circumstances that led to them. He was also asked to describe the steps he had taken since then to change and to make any statement he thought would be appropriate.

“I sent in all the answers,” he said. “It brought back a lot of old feelings and a lot of that stuff I try to forget. But I keep a level head.”

Jonas has been sober for seven years. “Every day I do something for my recovery,” he said. “It helps to get out of myself and help someone else. It keeps me grounded. The person I was then is not the person I am now.” He said he was thinking positively about getting the job – and he did.

Jonas’s journey shows what so many people with records face: doors slammed shut, not because of who they are today, but because of a past they’ve already paid for.

That’s why the Fair Chance Amendment matters. By putting basic protections into our city’s highest law, New Orleans takes a concrete step toward giving people with conviction histories real opportunities to work, contribute, and thrive.

Listen to Jonas speak about his experience.

What a Difference an Open-Minded Employer Can Make!

By VOTE Members Julia Cass & Danena Williams

When Danena Williams came out of prison in March 2023 after serving 16 years of a 20-year sentence, she wanted to prove to herself, her friends, her family and the world that she was going to get it right. “I was young, 20, when I went to prison. I came home nowhere near that naïve girl I was then. I came home as an adult with education and ready to live life and achieve things and make up for the time that was lost.”

Danena Williams pictured in the Diamond House with
Norris Henderson (Executive Director) and Ivy Mathis (Reentry Specialist)

She was fortunate to get a place in VOTE’s transitional living facility for women- Diamond House – where she got support services and was able to live without paying rent for six months.

“It’s once you start job searching and apartment hunting that you run into roadblocks,“ she said. “Everybody wants to know: Are you a convicted felon? People don’t want to give you a chance because of your past. You want to start over and do right and be a productive citizen but you run into all these no, no, nos. It’s very discouraging.”

Danena ran into these roadblocks when she looked for housing. She said she viewed a number of different properties, met with the people renting them and “everything was a lovely experience.” She felt she was on the brink of being accepted several times but after her background check came in, she would get an email: We can’t rent to you. Finally, one landlord gave her a chance and, she said, she never missed a check or was late on the rent.

She did not hit a roadblock when she sought a job. She decided to apply at the IHOP on Carrollton Avenue, not far from Diamond House. While she was in prison, she took a number of courses and in one, she was certified in Serve Safe, a food safety course. She met with the general manager and said she had Serve Safe certification. “I was almost hired on the spot.” She started out as a server. After about a month, she was promoted to food chief and then assistant manager. When the manager left for another IHOP location, she became the manager. She has been manager there now for more than a year and has since hired six other formerly incarcerated women.

Danena Williams, I-HOP manager pictured with Stacy, a Diamond House alum also employed at I-HOP.

“We hired her as a server and she exceeded that role,” said Dhiya Esmail, the manager who hired Danena. He is part of the family that owns several IHOP franchises in the area. “She had the qualities of a leader. For example, I said we wanted the (condiment) caddy set up in a certain way and she focused on not just her tables but the whole restaurant. She is a genuine leader. This was not something we told her to do. This was what she came in the door doing.” He said franchisees can set their own employment policies, and his family does not refuse jobs for any category of people. “We always like to give people an opportunity to better themselves.”

Danena believes more employers should give formerly incarcerated people a chance in part for their own, business reasons. “That person you won’t consider could be one of the best employees you ever had – always on time, always dependable, whatever task you give them, they do 100 percent – then you miss out because you judged off the past.”

Society benefits too when people coming out of prison don’t have the odds stacked against them from the start. “Most people don’t leave prison thinking, ‘I’m going to commit a crime.’ The circumstances can dictate what comes next. I don’t think people realize how much messages impact people. But it’s a bad message that when get out, you’re not going to be able to get a job because you’re a convicted felon.” Employment is also necessary to obtain housing. Even if landlords didn’t reject Danena because of her record, they would not have considered renting to her if she had no income.

In the two years since she was released from prison, Danena has become a manager. She earns extra money with Door Dash – “When I’m not here, I’m Door Dashing” – and now owns a home in New Orleans East. She said her parents, who live in Texas, are, “As proud of her as parents could be. My mom was very disappointed when I was incarcerated. They had great hopes because I was in college. For me, being home and being 100 percent out of trouble and getting everything established and achieving what I have achieved, it’s about making them proud.” Even though Danena cannot really make up for lost time, she said, she has been able to “come home and show, not just say, but show that I can still make something of my life.”