They're deeply bound up in political decisions that they have no way to influence, like cuts to prison education programs and 15-minute phone calls costing as much as $22. Prisoners are not, as Buttigieg maintains, kept out of the 'political life of this nation,' they're kept from having any say in it. The answer is tied to the history of felon disenfranchisement, which was a post-Civil War push by states to keep newly freed former slaves from voting.