Does the disenfranchisement of UK prisoners make them all Political prisoners?

[scottycelt]

Indeed - so, until and unless that does indeed happen and the results are reliable and published, it's hardly a relevant issue in terms of the argument as to whether this right should be restored to prisoners, is it?!

Probably not, but if the figure is anywhere near accurate and 90% of prisoners would not bother to vote anyway, it does put Cameron's mock outrage and threatened 'sickness' into some sort of perspective, doesn't it?!

That was my point, ahinton.

[ahinton]

& even if creditable research did find that only 20% of prisoners would vote, it would still not be a valid argument either for allowing them to vote or not allowing them. It is a moral argument - so even if only 1 prisoner would vote prisoners should still be enfranchised & given the same opportunity as the rest of us to decide whether to take advantage of that opportunity or not.

I agree that attempting to drag in such a statistic - even if provable - constitutes a lame and unconvincing excuse for maintaining the status quo and, to turn this argument on its head, one might (albeit only frivolously) question whether all those entitled to vote in Newport, south Wales in the recent police and crime commissioners issues ought to have either been placed in prison or at the very least had their other voting rights removed from them...

[ahinton]

Probably not, but if the figure is anywhere near accurate and 90% of prisoners would not bother to vote anyway, it does put Cameron's mock outrage and threatened 'sickness' into some sort of perspective, doesn't it?!

That was my point, ahinton.

Then it is a rather pointless point, if I may say so, given your own admission that the statistic is in the conditional, based on absence not only of proof but, seemingly, any attempt to establish any; what Mr Cameron feels about this issue and why is his prerogative but, since he is not the head of a totalitarian state, it is only the view Parliament as a whole that can and will determine the outcome.

[scottycelt]

Then it is a rather pointless point, if I may say so, given your own admission that the statistic is in the conditional, based on absence not only of proof but, seemingly, any attempt to establish any; what Mr Cameron feels about this issue and why is his prerogative but, since he is not the head of a totalitarian state, it is only the view Parliament as a whole that can and will determine the outcome.

I totally agree!

Would you prefer me to now delete my offending pointless point, ahinton ... ?

[Lateralthinking1]

Some good points above but I am not sure that I understand all of them.

Frenchfrank's "Can you demand civil obligations and withhold civil rights?" - Does this refer to prisoners? Equal rights are not given to prisoners because obligations haven't been met by them. As such, it is a "because of" rather than an "and". The "and" suggests it is a sort of parallel thing when it isn't - it is cause and effect - or am I missing the point? The main answer is that you - I am guessing it is a "you" as in Government, the electorate, both? - can do whatever you have an electoral mandate to do, irrespective of international legal requirement. On the latter, you can comply, pay the fine for non-compliance or leave with consequences.

Pabmusic's "No - it's simpler than that. If one country can act in that way about one thing the ECHR doesn't like, another will feel it can too". Is that about institutionalised racism in Eastern Europe? I think it is extremely worrying that this is not being tackled head on. It could though explain why the ECHR is addressing the narrow matter of prisoners' votes. Either it hasn't the power to confront breaches of the most fundamental civil rights as they have been recognised in recent history across the world or, more likely, it won't exercise that power. If it is the latter, that's very alarming.

We need to be careful here that such countries don't drag us in their direction on the grounds of an appeal by a BNP member, or similar, which is then regarded as reasonable on the grounds that the wording approximately applies and that this is how things are done in Bosnia Herzogovina. You can see it now. A ruling that Bosnia is, in principle, right because gypsies can seem to some intimidating and people have a right not to feel intimidated. If there is any chance of such a thing happening, I would vote to leave the Convention on the grounds that it was no longer being exercised responsibly. Unless we can kick the current Bosnia etc out.

Ahinton - Eating, sleeping, breathing - these things are necessary to maintain life. You can live to a 105 without ever voting.

[ahinton]

I totally agree!

Would you prefer me to now delete my offending pointless point, ahinton ... ?

I have no preference one way or the other but assure you that I see no need for you to do so, especially as it has given no "offence" (at least to me and as far as I know)

[ahinton]

Eating, sleeping, breathing - these things are necessary to maintain life. You can live to a 105 without ever voting.

Whilst that is of course true, my sole point in mentioning those three things in the present context is that they are generally regarded as human rights, as indeed is voting in Britain and elsewhere; I am not aware that anyone has raised an argument that prisoners' rights should be confined solely to those that are specifically "necessary to maintain life".

[scottycelt]

I have no preference one way or the other but assure you that I see no need for you to do so, especially as it has given no "offence" (at least to me and as far as I know)

[vinteuil]

Whilst that is of course true, my sole point in mentioning those three things in the present context is that they are generally regarded as human rights, as indeed is voting in Britain and elsewhere; I am not aware that anyone has raised an argument that prisoners' rights should be confined solely to those that are specifically "necessary to maintain life".

I'm with Bentham in thinking that the concept of imprescriptible 'natural rights' is 'nonsense on stilts' -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

[ahinton]

I'm with Bentham in thinking that the concept of imprescriptible 'natural rights' is 'nonsense on stilts' -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

That's as may be, but Bentham's been dead for 180 years and, prescriptible or otherwise, human rights are in any case "prescribed" (albeit differently in different countries) by specific virtue of being enshrined in the law of the land and I don't think that there can be any doubt about voting in Britain being a "right" conferred by British law on almost all British citizens aged 18 or over, just as it was once one that was not conferred there by such law upon those aged under 21 or indeed women; whether such rights may or may not be deemed "natural" is surely hardly the point here, since voting is a legal right rather than a "natural" one.

[amateur51]

Plenty of sensible material here from The Prison Reform Trust:

http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/ProjectsResearch/Citizenship/BarredfromVoting

[Lateralthinking1]

It is quite interesting to note that John Stuart Mill, who considered that an individual's liberty of action should only be interfered with by the state if someone has caused harm to others, also believed that prisoners should be required to undertake hard labour for reasons of deterrence. Rather than focussing on an especially selected application of "civic death" - one that does not take into account the form of civic death felt by all through imposition - he described categories of people as "the unassimilated".

I do not believe that he thought it a requirement of the state to ensure that every individual is assimilated but rather he believed all should carry that social responsibility knowing that action could be taken if they didn't. His harm principle does not require punishment. It tells us only when punishment is permitted. However, he argues that the origin of justice rests in part in natural sentiments of revenge and that these sentiments are useful for the preservation of society. While these sentiments are not themselves moral, they are moral when subordinated to the social feeling that has punished others for the greater societal good.

Historical reference matters. Mill worried a great deal about "culture clash" and considered, among other things, whether certain actions in Indian and Japanese cultures involving honourable death, particularly to self, had the potential to harm others. Clearly he was of his time, somewhat perplexed about cultural differences because of remoteness. But I think what it shows us - and he was at least partially influenced by Bentham - is that liberty is not necessarily based on the laissez faire or equality across the board. Permissions must address cause and consequence. That is to say that authority can be quite draconian without this being wholly incompatible with the objective of promoting individual freedom in law-abiding society. Votes for the unassimilated can oppress us.

It seems to me that in this supposedly advanced era - I hesitate to describe what we have now as a social contract but these times might accurately be described as still having something of that essence - that a state role in the rehabilitation of ex-offenders should by now have been established. After all, we have established a more pro-active role for the state broadly in a plethora of wide-ranging legislation and this has emerged with the development of semi-universal suffrage. There is also a concept of a mandate, however poor its application and its immense capacity for evading clear identification beyond the merely theoretical. Even so, I doubt that this is very relevant to Mill's approach to the unassimilated. His principles still in many respects apply.

[ahinton]

Plenty of sensible material here from The Prison Reform Trust:

http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/ProjectsResearch/Citizenship/BarredfromVoting

Indeed there is; many thanks for drawing attention to it. Ms Lyon's remarks are particularly pertinent. That "people are sent to prison to lose their liberty not their identity" is perhaps the most succinctly fundamental part of this. Her reference to "the 19th century concept of civic death" immediately identifies the specifically antediluvian aspect of the fact that "the continued withdrawal of prisoners' voting rights...has no place in a modern democracy and is legally and morally unsustainable". The fact that, as she further states, "experienced prison governors and officials, past and present bishops to prisons and chief inspectors, electoral commissioners, legal and constitutional experts and most other European governments believe (that) people in prison should be able to exercise their civic responsibility" and, presumably by extension, should therefore also be expected to do so, is surely as powerful a weapon against the current situation as any and identifies as a glaring indictment that Parliament stills appears prepared to continue to fly in the face of so massive and diverse a weight of long-term committed opposition. That in addition to all of this, as she then states, "the European Court has made clear...the UK’s legal obligations to overturn the blanket ban", should be sufficient to nail the swift end of this stricture ought to be painfully obvious; that it is still not so reveals in the interim an unbridled Parliamentary obduracy on what is surely an unprecedented scale.

In illustrating further the sheer obsolescence of the continued ban, the article refers to it dating back to "the Forfeiture Act of 1870" and describes "the notion of civic death" on which its principles were base as "a punishment entailing the withdrawal of citizenship rights"; this also reveals an inconsistency of approach in that no prisoner unable to vote has his/her citizenship rights removed or passport confiscated and the rights enshrined therein officially annulled.

What I remain unclear about, however, is the date of publication of this article and the dates from which the six months to which it refers is supposed to have run and on which it is scheduled to expire; can you please enlighten us on that?

[french frank]

I think too that there is something to be said for giving prisoners the freedom of being outside the normal system during their prison stay. It gives them an opportunity not to be tainted by the wayward aspects of our law and politics.

That was my point earlier about civic obligations and civic rights. You are taking away a civic right: what about civic (and even legal) obligations?

In the case of removing the right to vote, what about the obligation to pay tax (on unearned income/savings) if applicable?

No taxation without representation?

[amateur51]

What I remain unclear about, however, is the date of publication of this article and the dates from which the six months to which it refers is supposed to have run and on which it is scheduled to expire; can you please enlighten us on that?

The judgement Scoppola v Italy no 3 was handed down in May 2012. Other than that I'm unable to help but if you were to send Ms Lyons an email with this information request I'd hope that you would get a reply (and some information on how to support PRT's important work )