Jon Collins Articles

Later today MPs will get the chance to debate whether sentenced prisoners should get the right to vote, following the announcement before Christmas that the government intends to change the law to enfranchise some sentenced prisoners.

The publication last week of a criminal justice green paper, Breaking the Cycle, has caused a storm in the media, with justice secretary Ken Clarke lambasted as a ‘bumptious idiot’ who is ‘molly-coddling murderers with liberal claptrap’. Prominent Tory commentators Matthew d’Ancona and The Spectator’s James Forsyth have subsequently suggested that Clarke should be moved on before he can cause any further damage, while the package itself has been widely panned in parts of the media as ‘soft’.

The reality, predictably, is somewhat different.