Consultation launched on prisoner voting rights
The government has today published proposals that could see certain categories of prisoners allowed to vote while in jail.
The consultation paper calls for views on whether a judge should be allowed to decide case by case if an offender has the right to vote in prison, or if this right should be decided on the basis of the length of a sentence or the specific type of crime.
Currently, all prisoners are barred from voting, except those held in jail on remand, but a European court ruling last year said this blanket ban breached the right to free elections enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The judgment was passed in the case of 54-year-old inmate John Hirst, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for manslaughter in 1980. He was released on license in May last year but barred from voting under the Representation of the People Act 1983.
In a written statement to parliament today, constitutional affairs secretary Lord Falconer said he still believed prisoners should be barred from voting, but noted the government must respond to the European court ruling.
“The right to vote in the UK is considered by many to be a privilege as well as an entitlement, and that persons who are convicted of an offence serious enough to warrant a term in prison have cast aside that privilege and entitlement for the duration of their sentence,” he said.
“Successive UK governments have held to the view that the right to vote forms part of the social contract between individuals and the state, and that loss of the right to vote, reflected in the current law, is a proper and proportionate punishment for breaches of the social contract that resulted in imprisonment.”
The Hirst judgment was welcomed by prison reform groups and the Liberal Democrats, who argued that prison should be about rehabilitation. They said shutting offenders off from such a key role in society as voting would not help this.
Today Lib Dem president Simon Hughes said: “There is a strong case that unconvicted prisoners on remand and prisoners serving shorter sentences who will soon be back in society should retain their votes if we are serious about rehabilitation.”
However, shadow constitutional affairs secretary Oliver Heald said imprisonment should mean losing your liberty, warning: “Conservatives do not agree that some of the most serious criminals, including murderers and rapists locked up for life, should be able to vote.”
