A humiliation for justice and democracy

Lewis Bright

Name:Lewis Bright
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Joined: Jan 2012
Occupation: studying economics at Glasgow university
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For 6 years the British government attempted to defy a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that declared Britain’s 140 year old blanket ban on giving prisoners the vote illegal. However, with the threat of lawsuits that could amount to £100 million they have been forced to concede defeat. David Cameron declared in the commons that the prospect of giving prisoners the vote made him “physically ill”. And rightly so. This is yet another example of British sovereignty coming under attack from EU bureaucracy.

Photo by Michael Coghlan

The ban has been enshrined in British law since before the working man got the vote. To the majority of the British public it is a just and fair ruling. After all, these are criminals, put in prison because they are unable to adhere to the rules set down by society. And now they come out and openly demand a say in who society chooses to make these rules.

All of this stems from 2004, when the prisoner John Hirst went to court to challenge the 1870 forfeiture act, which prevents all prisoners from voting. He said that not being allowed to vote was a violation of his human rights. The court agreed. Mr Hirst is currently serving a 15 year sentence for murdering his landlady with an axe. This effectively means that an axe wielding maniac is having a say in the law making of this nation. The notion of such a person brazenly challenging the establishment would have been laughable 100 years ago, when common sense still held some sway.

In this country, upon being found guilty, prisoners are convicted to civic death. This simply means that upon conviction they lose the freedoms that law abiding members of society enjoy. They are locked away from society because they have committed acts that are to the detriment of society. This is the main distinction between prison and normal society – freedom. The vote is included in this because living in a democratic society the vote is perhaps the most important liberty we have. Taking this away from prisoners is a punishment and is symbolic of society’s attitude to those people – in the eyes of society they do not deserve the vote. Prisoners have no right to decide who governs society because they have proven themselves to be unable to abide by its laws. They should only be handed back the right to vote when they have paid their debt to society through concluding their prison sentence and being fully rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.

There is also the issue of using your vote responsibly. The vote has the power to elect governments and bring new people and ideas to the forefront of British politics. Is such power safe in the hands of people like John Hirst? People are not sent to prison for minor crimes anymore. If you are in prison it is because you have shown a serious lack of regard for society. Will a prisoner vote with the best interests of the society that imprisoned them at heart, or will they just plump for the party that will ensure the quickest release? There are already stringent measures in place that prevent prisoners from being ill treated. This is not a matter of representation either. Prisoners are already represented by independent organisations whose sole purpose is to ensure their wellbeing. To give prisoners the vote would be dangerous. They have already harmed society and now from the comfort of their prison cell they have the chance to do so again by abusing the hard fought for right to vote.

A prisoner’s rehabilitation is paramount. This is not done by pandering to their every whim and whimper. As draconian as it sounds, a certain amount of punishment is required. This comes in the form of the removal of liberties, to reinforce to the inmate the fact that they are, for the mean time, no longer part of society. By succumbing to the demands of prisoners on this issue we are blurring this boundary. These prisoners exclaim the violation of their human rights at every opportunity, yet these prisoners certainly did not show such regard to their victims’ human rights.

But is this even a human rights issue? These people are not being subjected to torture or living in squalor. Many have the privilege of flat screen TVs and Xboxs in their cells. Just like their flat screen TV the vote is a privilege and it is a privilege that they revoked when they committed their crime. Prisoners cannot be fully rehabilitated until they show remorse, and such a state of mind cannot be achieved by affording them the same rights as ordinary people.

The British Attorney General Dominic Grieve said that “if convicted rapists and murderers are given the vote it will bring the law into disrepute and many people will see it as making a mockery of justice”. The British public echo these sentiments as do their MPs who voted 234 against and only 22 for giving prisoners the vote. Yet it is being imposed on us by an unelected body that is showing blatant disregard for the opinion of the people of the United Kingdom. Here the idea is alien. The ECHR has highlighted how out of touch they are with the people they are supposed to represent. The British people do not want prisoners to have the vote and they never have.

The idea of giving prisoners the vote makes me want to tear my hair out in frustration. It is an affront to democracy. To give criminals the same voting rights as their victims is disrespectful and contradictory to British values. Winston Churchill said that “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope”. These are the qualities and rights that he felt made the perfect society and none of these are exemplified by the average prisoner. That is not to say that prisoners are incapable of displaying these values – many leave prison as entirely different people. But whilst their rehabilitation is incomplete they cannot conform to these rights and qualities. Losing the vote helps them to subscribe to these values. They are put in prison so that they can learn the errors of their ways. To be fully rehabilitated some of their liberties must be withheld – this is the only way they can realise the distinction between themselves and law abiding society.