Voting rights in prison
There is an ongoing clash between the current government and the European Court of Human Rights on the subject of whether prisoners can vote. The ECHR says that the current blanket ban is too harsh, and the government must introduces some subtlety. The government has replied in strong language that they find the idea of those guilty of horrible crimes having the vote to be repellent.
My sympathies are much more with the EHCR than the government. I view the right to participate in the governance of your community as a human right, not a privilege handed out for being well behaved. Even when we have misbehaved, even appallingly, we have a right to express our opinion. Tha majority can override us not by silencing us but by casting their votes in the direction of moral behaviour. Should we ever reach the point at which the votes of criminals, should they vote in an aberrant way, outnumber the votes of well-behaved people, society is in such deep trouble that voting is very far from the major problem.
Therefore I feel that, in principle, prisoners should have the vote - on a Voltairean basis if not other. But there are practical problems. In what constituency whould they vote? We vote as part of a geographic community - where we live. A pragmatic mechanism that, though it has its faults, I would not suggest replacing until someone comes up with a better system, which they have not yet done. But putting someone in prison wrenches them out of their community. Of course, those in prison for short terms have just come from their community and will shortly return to it. They are still in touch with that community and have personal knowledge of its needs. Therefore they can still vote in that community. But long term prisoners lose touch with the community at large. Even if they are still in contact with individual family members, they are no longer in touch with the rest of the community. Any opinions they have will be based purely on their family's report. So their vote would effectively be an extra vote for their relatives.
But they are hardly part of the community where they are imprisoned. And they have been dragged into that constituency through no wish of their own, or of the constituents who surround their prison. It is hardly fair to other voters to dump on them the votes of several hundred unknown and reluctant co-residents.
Therefore I feel that prisoners should not be allowed to register in a constituency where they have not been voluntarily resident for over a year. Short term prisoners - the vast majority - would retain the right to vote, exercised postally, for between one and two years. Long term prisoners would, for purely pragmatic reasons, not have a constituency to vote in.
If there were enough long term prisoners to form a constituency (far from true), I could see it possible to form a special constituency for them - whose voting pattern would be interesting, in a way hardly likely to imperil Parliament with a single MP. But this is unlikely to happen, especially with falling crime rates if not incarceration rates. Most prisoners are inside for less that two years.
My sympathies are much more with the EHCR than the government. I view the right to participate in the governance of your community as a human right, not a privilege handed out for being well behaved. Even when we have misbehaved, even appallingly, we have a right to express our opinion. Tha majority can override us not by silencing us but by casting their votes in the direction of moral behaviour. Should we ever reach the point at which the votes of criminals, should they vote in an aberrant way, outnumber the votes of well-behaved people, society is in such deep trouble that voting is very far from the major problem.
Therefore I feel that, in principle, prisoners should have the vote - on a Voltairean basis if not other. But there are practical problems. In what constituency whould they vote? We vote as part of a geographic community - where we live. A pragmatic mechanism that, though it has its faults, I would not suggest replacing until someone comes up with a better system, which they have not yet done. But putting someone in prison wrenches them out of their community. Of course, those in prison for short terms have just come from their community and will shortly return to it. They are still in touch with that community and have personal knowledge of its needs. Therefore they can still vote in that community. But long term prisoners lose touch with the community at large. Even if they are still in contact with individual family members, they are no longer in touch with the rest of the community. Any opinions they have will be based purely on their family's report. So their vote would effectively be an extra vote for their relatives.
But they are hardly part of the community where they are imprisoned. And they have been dragged into that constituency through no wish of their own, or of the constituents who surround their prison. It is hardly fair to other voters to dump on them the votes of several hundred unknown and reluctant co-residents.
Therefore I feel that prisoners should not be allowed to register in a constituency where they have not been voluntarily resident for over a year. Short term prisoners - the vast majority - would retain the right to vote, exercised postally, for between one and two years. Long term prisoners would, for purely pragmatic reasons, not have a constituency to vote in.
If there were enough long term prisoners to form a constituency (far from true), I could see it possible to form a special constituency for them - whose voting pattern would be interesting, in a way hardly likely to imperil Parliament with a single MP. But this is unlikely to happen, especially with falling crime rates if not incarceration rates. Most prisoners are inside for less that two years.