If you consistently need to trick yourself into reading a page of a book there are probably deeper issues that won't be fixed by: "Eat more vegetables → Eat an apple".
Hip-shot hypothesis: The productivity literature audience is overwhelmingly intelligent people with untreated ADD & ADHD.
In reality they aren't KKK members though. Instead they are disproportionately black and other minorities.
Regardless of whether or not you think incarceration of minorities is systemized disenfranchisement, I think any loophole that hypothetically allows the system to chose who may vote is a bigger threat to democracy than an incentive to appeal to criminals.
Totally agree with your point that incentivizing "pandering to criminals" can be a bad thing though, just the lesser of the two imo.