Felony

A felony is a serious crime, usually punishable by more than one year in prison. Historically, it was more common to punish felonies with death, and it is still sometimes legal to kill a person who is in the act of committing a violent felony. Felons are often disenfranchised from voting until they are released from court supervision and successfully complete a procedure for getting their rights restored. In some states, it is left up to the governor's discretion whether to restore a particular defendant's voting rights, and rates of rights restoration vary depending on whether the governor and his party believe that the addition of large numbers of felons to the voting rolls will benefit or harm their prospects of winning elections. The disenfranchisement of felons can create a vicious cycle in which those who disagree with certain laws, and therefore are more inclined to break them (or who want to engage in certain behaviors, and therefore have a greater desire to legalize those behaviors), lose the power the vote, which makes it more likely that those laws will remain in place.

Of course, it is not the case that all lawbreakers oppose the laws that they break; as Ludwig von Mises notes, "Even the refractory delinquent who fails to adjust his conduct to the requirements of life within the societal system of cooperation does not want to miss any of the advantages derived from the division of labor. He does not consciously aim at the destruction of society. He wants to lay his hands on a greater portion of the jointly produced wealth than the social order assigns to him. He would feel miserable if antisocial behavior were to become universal and its inevitable outcome, the return to primitive indigence, resulted."