I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.
If a felon attacks you and lives, he will reasonably conclude that he can do it again. By submitting to him, you not only imperil your own life, but you jeopardize the lives of others.
Once you're a felon you're a target.
Your thief looks Exactly like the rest, or rather better; 'Tis only at the bar, and in the dungeon, That wise men know your felon by his features.
Butler is branded a felon, an outlaw, an enemy of Mankind, and so ordered that in the event of his capture, the officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be immediately executed by hanging.
Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and largely less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
Nationwide about 1 in 7 black men are temporarily or permanently disenfranchised due to felon disenfranchisement laws.
If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore what he must be taught to fear is his victim.
