The European Court of Human Rights has decided that a blanket ban on giving prisoners the vote is a denial of their human rights,More than 28,000 prisoners are to win the right to vote, new figures showed yesterday, as David Cameron faces a growing revolt from the Tory right against the lifting of the 140-year-old ban on inmates voting in British elections.Crispin Blunt, the justice minister, announced that 28,770 prisoners serving sentences of up to four years will be given the right to vote. The figures include 5,991 prisoners convicted of violent offences and 1,753 inmates convicted of sexual offences.
The government revealed the change last year in response to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg six years ago that a blanket voting ban on convicted prisoners in British jails was unlawful.
Immediately as Cameron decided this, the issue became one of national sovereignty and why the European Court should enforce what Norman Tebbit today called, in the Guardian of all places, an affront to democracy and "judicial imperialism" by the EU.
But the other issue is even if the ECHR has decreed against banning prisoners voting, that still does not necessarily make it right and that people in Britain should simply accept it and not challenge the nature of the ruling.
The question of votes for convicted criminals in British jails has never been put to the British people. There was originally no need for legislation: as prisoners were not normally resident at a home address when the electoral lists were made up, they were not eligible to vote, nor could they have got to the polls and they did not qualify for postal votes.
Tebbit simply juxtaposes national sovereignty and the wishes of the British people against the EU. But Dianne Abbot then piped in with this,
The logic of Norman Tebbit's argument is that governement could take away the vote of anyone the ruling party happened not to like.
Criminals have human rights too, and logically that involves the right to vote. There is a debate to be had about how exactly that right is extended. For instance, if every prisoner on the Isle of Wight was enabled to vote in that single constituency, it would have a distorting effect on the franchise. But the principle seems straightforward enough.
Furthermore it is precisely the Norman Tebbit style narrative, which implies that all prisoners are subhuman, which makes it so hard to argue for genuine prison reform and effort around mental health issues (a substantial proportion of prisoners have mental health problems which go untreated) which might give us a chance of genuinely rehabilitating the people who pass through our prison system.
Tebbit nowhere implies that. Criminals have the right not to be beaten or tortured as well as the right to appeal. They already have such rights and nobody in their right mind would think of depriving them of these rights. But obviously criminals do not have the right to live with a family, to be at liberty and so on.
Why Abbot should think that criminals having rights means they "logically"should have the right to vote does not at all follow. Lunatics cannot vote. Nor can children, despite politicians using arguments that could just as well appeal to them such is their level of condescension and puerile public relations speak and soundbites.
Prisoners should not be able to vote for as long as they are in prison because they are criminals. By committing crime they have broken the rule of law upon which society depends for security and liberty and should have no say in how it is governed until released.
Rights are not abstract things to be laid down by decree but they are exercised within a social setting and found through reference to case law and precedents decided upon by judges.For society to operate, rights must come with with the responsibility to honour the rights of others.
This a criminal necessarily forfeits on being found guilty of committing a crime as he breaks the social contract either by disregarding the rights of other individuals or by attacking the social compact agreed by consent through the rule of law, decided upon by courts and Parliament.
By committing a crime, the right to vote MP's into Parliament that makes those laws is suspended until the prisoner comes out of prison and is no longer serving a criminal sentence. This is also connected to the idea the idea of punishment, of losing something that was once had as the consequence of doing something harmful and bad to others.
The reason is partly an ideology in which liberals feel squeamish about the notion of punishment at all, as if this were itself barbaric . The aim of punishment should be atonement, the working through from guilt to a new life by being made to understand the bad and harm they have caused.
That means not inflicting pain on the convict which is mere vengeance and retribution . But it means taking away certain rights, such as the right to vote, that others who play by the rule of law and do not commit crime should have by right. This is in accordance with natural rules of fairness.
The notion of rehabilitation divorced from punishment, that criminals have simply broken 'social norms' and need to be made to function normally again by being given the necessary skills to cope with society is part of a crude utilitarian creed in which questions of good or evil are extruded completely.
This inability to accept the notion of wrong doing or evil is one reason why crime levels are high.
If committing crime merely means a person goes to a different place where they are restricted in order to protect the public, without there being a substantial deprivation of the rights inside that others enjoy outside beyond liberty, then the sense that person is being punished for doing wrong is taken away. It makes prison a security detainment centre.
Abbott also claims,...it is precisely the Norman Tebbit style narrative, which implies that all prisoners are subhuman, which makes it so hard to argue for genuine prison reform and effort around mental health issues (a substantial proportion of prisoners have mental health problems which go untreated) which might give us a chance of genuinely rehabilitating the people who pass through our prison system.
The question of which human rights prisoners i.e convicted criminals have, is avoided by Abbot, as the intent is to score cheap political points as opposed to engaging at any intelligent way with arguments over which rights can be legitimately abrogated on having been found guilty of committing a crime
Tebbit nowhere states that prisoners can be bullied or attacked at will ( though they are by other prisoners ).
As is evident from here concerns for the disproportionate result of a prisoner vote on the Isle of Wight, Abbot thinks that prisoners have the human right to vote only in so far as they do not affect the outcome of voting. Perhaps voting does not really matter that much anyway if it cannot yield the correct results so there is no real point in depriving criminals of the vote
If criminals on the Isle of Wight have as much of a human right to vote than those outside prison it is irrelevant whether that would "distort" voting patters. Why "distort" ? After all, by her logic prisoners are no different from those who do not break the law in all respects with regards human rights and are just living in another place
...............................Denis Joe offers a good assessment.
It would be more purposeful to look at the this question in the wider context of how society has changed, especially under the NuLabour government.
Today’s Britain resembles, more, an open prison than an actual free society. The constant surveillance of the population, compounded by petty local laws, that dictate where and when we can drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes walk our dogs, etc. The constant demand that we should justify ourselves whether having to show ID at the supermarket when buying alcohol or having to have CRB checks before we can even be considered for a (paid or voluntary) job.
The constant hectoring from TV celebs, Charities and Government departments on what we should eat or how we should bring up our children. All this has contributed toward a society that is unfree.
So, in effect, the blurring between society and an institution like prisons, is understandable.
But that is not to excuse it.
The other side of the coins illustrates the contempt that the establishment holds its citizen in. The need to justify ourselves means that we are all criminals until some (unaccountable) agency says otherwise. The idea that prisoner should vote diminishes the importance of the act of voting. It seems to suggest that voting is simply a mechanical process and not the illustration of a free and open society.
Prisoners have broken the rules of society, and therefore their rights are taken away from them for a period of time. That not only means the right of free movement (even though that cannot be said to exist within society) but also other rights, such as the right to vote. Once a person is released and is back into society then those rights are restored.
To allow prisoners the right to vote makes a mockery of democracy. the fact that this ‘right’ exists in other European countries, does not make it correct.
No comments:
Post a Comment