Prisoners Should Be Allowed to Vote
And Nick Clegg appears on board:
Prison reformers have welcomed reports that Nick Clegg is to move to end the ban on prisoners taking part in elections, despite the government being compelled to do so after a European judgment.
A report in the Times of the deputy prime minister’s backing for enfranchising prisoners surprised penal reformers because it follows strong criticism last week from the Council of Europe on the government’s failure to abide by a 2005 European Court of Human Rights ruling that the ban was unlawful.
The Cabinet Office confirmed today that responsibility for prisoners’ voting rights was moved in July from Ken Clarke’s justice ministry to the office of the deputy prime minister, which is in charge of electoral reform. A spokesperson said the issue had been given “active consideration” over the summer, but would not say that that consideration was continuing.
Lord McNally, the Liberal Democrat justice minister, promised a House of Lords debate in June that the coalition was “looking afresh” at ways of lifting the ban and would report by September. McNally told a fringe meeting at the party’s conference in Liverpool this weekend that the government now intended to comply by December.
Good. It’s about bloody time. I’ve never comprehended how as a society we can tolerate removing prisoners’ rights to vote. If prison is supposed to be (at least in principle) a place for offenders to be rehabilitated, what message does it send them when they are excluded by the prime means of representation in the society they’re supposed (eventually) to be released back into? For that matter do they not have the right to representation as prisoners? Should their needs not be catered for by the political system? I agree that they should be. Controversial it may be, but I also believe that all prisoners should be represented, even lifers. They may be taken out of mainstream society, but they still have human rights and thus needs which deserve to be represented.
I wonder if this’ll generate any comments?
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Hmm. I have conflicting feelings about this.
On the one hand, liberal me agrees with the whole rehabilitation thing, and I believe that if people are to be reintegrated into society they need to be “in touch” with society.
On the other hand, judgmental me believes that most prisoners are where they are because they have done something to suppress someone else’s human rights and I think it’s only fair that they have their human rights suppressed in turn.
I think as long as prisoners are fed, watered and protected from harm, their human rights are adequately catered for.
Rehabilitation is part of imprisonment, sure, but so is punishment.
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