A version of this article will appear in the September 2010 edition of Around Europe.
Well, actually they haven’t condemned British inaction, at least not recently. However, if past meetings of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers are anything to go by they will do when they meet next week. The British government has persistently failed to implement the rulings of a 2005 European Court of Human Rights case that found the continued political disenfranchisement of all British prisoners illegal. But why should prisoners be allowed to vote at all?
‘Imprisonment is by the deprivation of liberty a punishment in itself’, so state the 2006 European Prison Rules. Whether the ‘deprivation of liberty’ includes the freedom to vote in democratic elections remains contested ground.
At least, it remains contested ground in some quarters. In its 2005 ruling Hirst v. the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights was quite emphatic: ‘Such a general, automatic and indiscriminate restriction on a vitally important Convention right must be seen as falling outside any acceptable margin of appreciation’. The ‘Convention’ in question is the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. Let’s not mince our words: the UK’s blanket ban preventing all prisoners from voting irrespective of the nature of offence committed or length of sentence is both unreasonable and illegal.
The UK is not, however, the only Council of Europe member state to disregard international treaty obligations and European case law. As the table indicates, the international picture varies quite dramatically, and no clear pattern is discernible by either geography or political tradition: the UK and Russia both exclude all prisoners from voting; Ireland and Ukraine do not.
The issue remains contentious, and some judge saying somewhere that prisoners should be given the vote is just not going to cut it with the naysayers. Fair enough. Proponents of penal reform need to win the intellectual (and emotional) argument. I hope to put down a few markers in what follows.
The British government’s argument in court that ‘removal from society means removal from the privileges of society, amongst which is the right to vote for one’s representatives’ may not hold legal sway, but there is certainly some emotional logic to the defence. However, it is in society’s interest to reintegrate offenders back into the community upon release from prison; to encourage ex-prisoners to become productive members of said communities; to reduce the likelihood of reoffending, ensuring there are fewer victims in the future. Social exclusion is a key driver of criminality and continued reoffending. Political inclusion can play a part in countering the perverse effects of this exclusion.
The European-based AIRE Centre argued convincingly that the Committee of Ministers’ recommendations regarding the management of ‘lifers’ provide a justification for allowing prisoners to vote.
Hopefully the Coalition government will not drag its feet in the way Labour managed to for five years. At the very least, denying convicted prisoners the option of fulfilling their democratic obligations serves no purpose in either protecting the public or reforming the offender. At worst, it damages our democracy. In the words of a Canadian high court judge, the limiting of the franchise ‘undermines the legitimacy of the government, the effectiveness of the government, and the rule of law’. That’s not a particularly favourable outcome either.
The article is based on research undertaken for an upcoming report investigating the social reintegration of ex-prisoners in across the Council of Europe.
Well, actually they haven’t condemned British inaction, at least not recently. However, if past meetings of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers are anything to go by they will do when they meet next week. The British government has persistently failed to implement the rulings of a 2005 European Court of Human Rights case that found the continued political disenfranchisement of all British prisoners illegal. But why should prisoners be allowed to vote at all?
‘Imprisonment is by the deprivation of liberty a punishment in itself’, so state the 2006 European Prison Rules. Whether the ‘deprivation of liberty’ includes the freedom to vote in democratic elections remains contested ground.
At least, it remains contested ground in some quarters. In its 2005 ruling Hirst v. the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights was quite emphatic: ‘Such a general, automatic and indiscriminate restriction on a vitally important Convention right must be seen as falling outside any acceptable margin of appreciation’. The ‘Convention’ in question is the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. Let’s not mince our words: the UK’s blanket ban preventing all prisoners from voting irrespective of the nature of offence committed or length of sentence is both unreasonable and illegal.
The UK is not, however, the only Council of Europe member state to disregard international treaty obligations and European case law. As the table indicates, the international picture varies quite dramatically, and no clear pattern is discernible by either geography or political tradition: the UK and Russia both exclude all prisoners from voting; Ireland and Ukraine do not.
| Countries that allow prisoners to vote (without restrictions): | Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Monaco, Norway, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine |
| Countries that allow prisoners to vote (under certain conditions): | Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Malta, FYR Macedonia, Moldova, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey |
| Countries that do not allow prisoners to vote: | |
| Countries that do not allow prisoners to vote and continue to impose restrictions after release: | |
The issue remains contentious, and some judge saying somewhere that prisoners should be given the vote is just not going to cut it with the naysayers. Fair enough. Proponents of penal reform need to win the intellectual (and emotional) argument. I hope to put down a few markers in what follows.
The British government’s argument in court that ‘removal from society means removal from the privileges of society, amongst which is the right to vote for one’s representatives’ may not hold legal sway, but there is certainly some emotional logic to the defence. However, it is in society’s interest to reintegrate offenders back into the community upon release from prison; to encourage ex-prisoners to become productive members of said communities; to reduce the likelihood of reoffending, ensuring there are fewer victims in the future. Social exclusion is a key driver of criminality and continued reoffending. Political inclusion can play a part in countering the perverse effects of this exclusion.
The European-based AIRE Centre argued convincingly that the Committee of Ministers’ recommendations regarding the management of ‘lifers’ provide a justification for allowing prisoners to vote.
Recommendation Rec(2003)23 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the management by prison administrations of life sentence and other long-term prisonersThe justification is not explicit. However, the ‘individualisation’, ‘normalisation’ and ‘responsibility’ principles support ‘the extension of the vote to prisoners by fostering their connection with society, increasing their stake in society and taking into account their personal circumstances and characteristics’. The psychological impact of involving prisoners in the ‘normal’ workings of society should not be underestimated. To take the even more seemingly mundane example of bank cards, the reaction of an ex-offender to being symbolically part of society is telling: ‘I know it seems a bit trivial but sometimes it seems important also [because] you just feel like everybody else. It’s been years and years since I ever imagined using a card in a shop’. The research evidence suggests that this emotional dimension is part of a matrix of reasons (both practical and psychological) that explain why assisting prisoners in accessing basic financial services has a positive impact on the rate of reoffending experienced.
General principles:
3. Consideration should be given to the diversity of personal characteristics to be found among life sentence and long-term prisoners and account taken of them to make individual plans for the implementation of the sentence (individualisation principle).
4. Prison life should be arranged so as to approximate as closely as possible to the realities of life in the community (normalisation principle).
5. Prisoners should be given opportunities to exercise personal responsibility in daily prison life (responsibility principle).
Hopefully the Coalition government will not drag its feet in the way Labour managed to for five years. At the very least, denying convicted prisoners the option of fulfilling their democratic obligations serves no purpose in either protecting the public or reforming the offender. At worst, it damages our democracy. In the words of a Canadian high court judge, the limiting of the franchise ‘undermines the legitimacy of the government, the effectiveness of the government, and the rule of law’. That’s not a particularly favourable outcome either.
The article is based on research undertaken for an upcoming report investigating the social reintegration of ex-prisoners in across the Council of Europe.
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