Prisoners Have Rights Too!
But according to European law they do:
The Council of Europe has urged the UK government to hurry up and change the law on prisoner voting rights. As things stand, the UK’s 84,073 strong prison population (all avowed Conservative voters, according to reports) are barred from voting in elections under section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983.
In March 2004, however, in the case of Hirst v. United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) unanimously ruled that the maintenance of an absolute bar on convicted prisoners voting was in breach of Article 3 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to free and fair elections.
The case was brought by John Hirst, a prisoner who, in 1980, had been sentenced to a term of discretionary life imprisonment after pleading guilty to manslaughter. The UK Government unsuccessfully appealed the decision before the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR.
Whether you agree with it or not, the case was won under this protocol, to which the UK is signed:
ARTICLE 3
The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.
So it really makes you wonder where Roger Godsiff gets off putting together an election leaflet like that, basically saying ‘Lib Dems Love Paedophiles and Murderers’ which couldn’t be less true. Godsiff meanwhile had the nerve to defend the leaflet:
Mr Godsiff defended the campaign tactic, saying the Lib Dems’ policy on the issue was “black and white” but they were not making that clear to voters.
“I agree that the imagery is strong but I do not accept that it is any stronger than anything that has been put out by my opponents,” Mr Godsiff told the BBC.
“The leaflet has been distributed in certain areas but it does not contain anything that is factually incorrect. I have put out some negative campaigning when my opponents do not tell the electorate what their position is.
“It is right and proper to ask whether they support or do not support whether people convicted of serious crimes can vote. I have invited other candidates to make their position clear….I have made my position clear.”
Labour has withdrawn the leaflet. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile describe their position on the European Court’s ruling as:
in future, [they said] judges should be given discretion to decide, upon sentencing, whether to strip someone of the vote, depending on the length of sentence and the nature of the crime.
Once a new system was in place, they said existing prisoners should be given the right to launch an appeal to try and secure the vote.
However, they insisted that those guilty of the most serious crime should never be able to do this.
Why this policy should be so offensive to Godsiff is a mystery, unless the leaflet really is a reflection of how terrified the party now is of the Liberal Democrats. I have to say I agree with the Court’s ruling, and not with the Lib Dems on this. The Court:
found no evidence to support the claim that disenfranchisement deterred crime and considered that the imposition of a blanket punishment on all prisoners regardless of their crime or individual circumstances indicated no rational link between the punishment and the offender.
The ECtHR also maintained that:
Removal of the vote in fact runs counter to the rehabilitation of the offender as a lawabiding member of the community and undermines the authority of the law as derived from a legislature which the community as a whole votes into power.
I agree with those points. I see no reason why any prisoner should ever be denied the vote. Reading the rest of the link above it’s revealing that the government is doing everything in its power not to abide by the Court’s ruling. Well done yet again to New Labour for sticking to its utter contempt for human rights. This general election will not be run in compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights – that’s what’s really offensive.
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Prisoners who have committed serious crimes should not get the vote. It should have nothing to do with rehabilitation or deterrence but with punishment!
If you commit a serious crime (murder, GBH, rape etc) you should be punished for it. I do have many issues with our voting system and am a strong believer that with voting comes certain responsibilities and if you abuse these, you should lose the privilege. That is what being able to vote is, it is a privilege!
I do not believe in a blanket ban as that is unfair on those that have committed minor infractions. However, i do believe that if you have committed a certain crime, or have been sentenced to a particular amount of time in prison then you should lose the right to vote. It should be a qualified right!
The Court says that being deprived of liberty does not lead, under the ECHR, to a loss of the ECHR’s protection. Having said that it does criticise the UK’s blanket, indiscriminate, unthinking ban, as being unconnected with the crime or individual circumstances. So in that your argument isn’t entirely out of step with the Court’s ruling.
I accept that human rights, whilst intrinsic and universal, can be limited and restricted. We don’t after all have universal, unrestricted freedom of speech. However I would tend to agree with the South African Constitutional Court’s position:
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.
I don’t think a purely emotional response is any more adequate here, than in the disgusting leaflet above. Prisoners are already punished through the loss of their liberty. To deprive them of the most crucial means of civic engagement can’t possibly contribute to the process of rehabilitation, which should be the point of the prison system, even for prisoners who aren’t released.
The difficult thing is to decide what prisoners can and cant have a vote. Thing like murder = no vote. But where does fraud come? What is a crime small enough to allow a prisoner to have a vote? It’s difficult.
My point (in addition to Charlotte’s) is this: if you decide prisoners can’t have certain rights, where does that end? The right to dignity? What if they’ve killed someone? The right to life?
The excellent Prison Reform Trust article also asks: if we are keeping prisoners civically engaged in society (through taxes and other engagements society still expects of them), whilst withdrawing their liberty, how can we then selectively impose civic ‘death’ with their human rights? I maintain we can’t.
The political system should be responsive to their needs as well as everyone else’s.
Ok so the snowball argument is taking it a little too far and is turning into a Daily Mail argument. We are talking about the restriction of one specific ‘privilege’. Im still of the opinion that it is a privilege and not a right.
I would also like to ask how removing the ‘right’ to vote is a civic death? Removing the ‘right’ does not end a persons involvement in society and does not prevent them from becoming a productive member of society. They can still work and volunteer etc.
With regards to your previous comment, i see you chose a quote from the South African constitution. It is interesting that you chose SA considering that only last year did they give the 2 million or so expats the vote. They thought that convicted criminals had more right to vote than those that had moved abroad. Clearly it needed a qualifier:
“the vote of each and every citizen (who lives in South Africa)”
I disagree that voting is the most crucial means of civic engagement. As i said before, there are plenty of other ways in which people can become productive members of society – through work and volunteering etc. Surely this is more fulfilling than the ability to vote???
Charlotte, this goes back to what i suggested before that maybe it should depend on the length of the prison sentence given as to whether or not the ‘right’ to vote is taken away?
I’m not sure what your objection to using South Africa’s Constitutional Court to illustrate my opinion is. Your point conflates the legislature and judiciary which doesn’t really ultimately contradict my point. The Court as the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution seems to have done well from both of our perspectives.
I didn’t suggest that prisoners can’t only be productive members of society through voting, but it is a pretty fundamental way, and it seems odd that we’d want them functioning as members of civil society in one way and not the other. Do their needs and concerns not need or deserve parliamentary representation after all?