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> The title is misleading -- someone convicted of a felony is still a felon after being released from prison.

Perhaps it's time for the US to follow the lead of most of its common law brethren in the Commonwealth and get rid of the terms "misdemeanour" and "felony".




What's wrong with having words for "small crime" and "big crime"?


I'm more concerned with having a word like "felon" to categorise _people_ into "small criminals" and "big criminals", rather than saying what it is they were actually convicted of.

Other common law jurisdictions get by just fine by categorising small crimes as "summary" and larger ones as "indictable" for the purposes of criminal procedure (not that this categorisation maps all that well in the US where the right to jury trials is more entrenched). There isn't a comparable term to "felon", which is fine, because it's much better to talk about a "convicted murderer" or "convicted drug trafficker" or "convicted drink driver". And laws imposing restrictions on ex-prisoners generally apply to specific crimes, or to crimes carrying particular sentences with the threshold varying depending on the type of restriction.

At that point, there just isn't much need for the word "felony".


Not like it means much to do that, you are subject to most of the same restrictions anyways in other english speaking countries, just under a different name than "felony".


The US is a bit special in how it restricts the rights of ex-felons though - it's the only major common law jurisdiction I can think of off the top of my head where some states restrict the voting rights of ex-prisoners.




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