While the relevant legislation will not be published until May or June, the issue has been brought to a head by an unlikely alliance of the former home and justice secretary Jack Straw, who was in the former role when the Human Rights Act was passed, and the civil liberties campaigner and former shadow home secretary David Davis. They have succeeded in securing a backbench debate and vote in the House of Commons on a motion arguing that no sentenced prisoner should be granted the vote. The motion is expected to pass, but this would be the wrong result. It is time for prisoners to get the vote.
Why? Firstly, and arguably most significantly, the European Court of Human Rights has clearly stated that barring all convicted prisoners from voting is illegal, breaching the right to free elections, and the UK has been strongly criticised by the Council of Europe for its inaction in implementing this judgement. The government cannot ignore the rule of law by picking and choosing which court decisions it complies with. The message that this sends is a poor one, for people in prison and for society as a whole, and it is disgraceful that this issue has not been acted on before now. In purely practical terms, the government also faces paying out significant compensation if it does not end the ban on prisoners voting, with the prime minister stating that failing to act now could cost the UK £160 million. At a time when public money is extremely scarce, it seems incredibly wasteful to squander it on unnecessary legal wrangling and compensation payments.
In addition, allowing prisoners to vote would encourage them to act responsibly and engage with society and it is difficult to argue that this would not be beneficial. Disenfranchising prisoners is also undemocratic, running contrary to the underlying principle that voting is a fundamental right in a democracy. The ban is based on the outdated concept of ‘civic death’, but people are sent to prison to lose their liberty, not their identity, and those who are sentenced to prison remain citizens. As the constitutional court of South Africa stated, when giving prisoners the vote, ‘the universality of the franchise is important not only for nationhood and democracy. The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and personhood. Quite literally, it says that everybody counts.’
We can be proud of a prison service that endeavours to treat every prisoner with decency and respect, regardless of their offence or the length of their sentence. Yet denying prisoners the right to vote has no place in such a system. Voting is a right, not a privilege, and disenfranchising prisoners is both unlawful and undemocratic. All MPs should therefore use today’s vote to demonstrate that it is time to take long-overdue action on this important issue and end our outdated and illegal ban on prisoners voting.
Jon Collins is director of the Criminal Justice Alliance
Denis MacShane MP has also written on this issue, lamenting that the prisoner vote row illustrates the further death of liberalism in politics
Rubbish!
A few questions leap, skip and bound to mind concerning this: For criminals serving time: just one of many civil liberties justifiably suspended whilst staying at Her Majesty’s pleasure, or the last bastion of defense, albeit in this case a symbolic one, against a government that has incarcerated them. Can the democratic right of electoral representation really be said to be a human right? Is the European Court within its right to so fly in the face of parliamentary sovereignty? Is the price of standing up to Europe worth the possible torrent of litigation that may follow? I would be intrigued to see a full debate.
Its tricky isn’t it , I mean people who don’t pay Tax vote don’t they,and they are outside the system in a way .Prisoners would probably take great swagger out of voting ,clutching at a self importance that even the odd cigarette end can confer at times,so may put extra burden on staff ? ( though sadly many are on much stronger drugs than that ) I had thought, as part of a rehabilitation process, they could get vote back but how many would care or take incentive from that ?? Has a vote been taken amongst prisoners to see if they want to vote ? ! Murderers and paedophiles ,violent crime ,high class deception/fraud ,robbery all these things have seriously hurt a victim or many.Say a contractor used poor concrete and something collapsed and killed 20 people,would you want him/her to vote ? Or stabbed an old lady at a bus stop ?(of course there one might look at his life circumstances and probably see he was a poor unfortunate who never had a chance other than to get to that point,no moral example in his life and infact could be rehabilitated ! I think a prisoner might feel condoned in their actions by taking pride from voting.I am not clear,obviously, on why Europe wants this.
I think there are some worthy arguments here, however the perception of being pushed into giving prisoners voting rights by ‘Europe’ is against most people’s sense of natural justice and fairness; I would rather see us get serious about sentencing and prison population issues in general, as we are in danger of being on the wrong side of a murky argument.