The question raised about felon disenfranchisement also inevitably raises the question as to whether the prison system should be more about rehabilitation, or punishment; something which must also be considered when contemplating this predicament. Convicted persons, during the time that they are detained in a penal institution, are legally incapable of voting at any parliamentary or local government election. One presumes this to be completely preposterous because prisoners, even those who serve the average life sentence, will eventually be released into society, and will be expected to become productive citizens within our society. We must rightly question how prisoners are expected to peacefully, and wholly reintegrate into the same society which stripped them of what some consider a human right?
Obviously, one must also correctly question: if prisoners have clearly violated the law, why should they deserve the right, or privilege, to vote? The answer is far from simple, as we must delve into the world of prisoners, understanding why they have committed certain crimes, perhaps they were predisposed to committing them, due to their disadvantaged positions in society, since prisoners disproportionally come from disadvantaged socio-economic groups; a fact published by the government’s Social Exclusion Unit in 2002. It observed “before they ever come into contact with the prison system, most prisoners have a history of social exclusion, including high levels of family, educational and health disadvantage, and poor prospects in the labour market.” By stripping felons from the right to vote, the government essentially reinforces to prisoners their self-presumed and implicit place within society, as second-class citizens, inferior to essentially all those who retain the right to vote.
As aforementioned, we must also consider the issue of rehabilitation and punishment regarding the purpose of prisons when considering the disenfranchisement of prisoners. Despite the entrenchment of rehabilitation in social and criminal justice policy, a poll in 2015 revealed that out of 1,000 UK adults, around 43% believed that the death penalty ought to be brought back to the UK, whilst only 3 in 10 thought it apt that it never be used at all, and more than 25% considered capital punishment to be an effective way of discouraging criminal activity. However, if we compare this to the US, 27 out of the 52 states implement the death penalty, however, they do not see low offending rates; in fact, the murder rate of death penalty states was found to be 30% higher than in those states who did not implement the death penalty. Thus, from this, we can conclude that the death penalty, and therefore, capital punishment are not incentive enough to reduce crime rates, keep prison population at bay, or reduce reoffending rates; within the first 12 months of release, 39.9% of ex-inmates reoffend in the UK, and within 9 years of release 75% of ex-inmates reoffend. Thus, this only further suggests that prison should not be so much about punishing prisoners, but more so helping to rehabilitate them, as Norway does, with a reoffending rate of only 20%. While I recognise that correlation does not imply causation, one is able to make an observed association; upon releasing prisoners into a society which barred them from their civil liberty to vote, they are surely prone to re-offending. Obviously, there may be a multitude of other reasons for these high re-offending rates, however, if felons are truly being rehabilitated into model citizens, soon to be free within our society, why are they not allowed to put this idea into practise? A model citizen is expected to vote, something which can even be considered a civic responsibility, and if prisoners are exempt from this, our high expectations of them simply being taught a lesson, or having had a well-deserved punishment, surely must be flawed, or else re-offending wouldn’t be such an issue.
Voting within prisons should become a common practise since it would uphold democracy, and finally recognise that prisoners are also a section of society who need to be adequately represented for. By not being able to vote, prisoners are all the more alienated and isolated further from our society, which depersonalises the whole experience of prison for the alleged betterment of a person, and has a less than desirable effect, as evidenced by the extremely high re-offending rates. Furthermore, the ban on prisoners voting perpetuates the notion of a civic death, as prisoners are forcibly socially excluded, signalling to prisoners that for the duration of their sentence, they are dead to society. However, this seems wholly hypocritical, considering that the notion of civic death is applied selectively; prisoners serving a sentence of any length continue to contribute financially to society by paying taxes, ergo, if they are considered civically alive when it comes to financial contributions, they should be treated in the same way when it comes to the basic human right of voting.
In a YouGov survey over 10 years ago, when the issue of the disenfranchisement of prisoners was still making headlines, of 752 British adults, 76% of respondents said that in principle, prisoners should not have the right to vote, versus 17% who said that prisoners should have the right to vote, and 7% stating that they did not know. Thus, it seems right to say that a majority of the respondents shared former Prime Minister David Cameron’s sentiment on the issue; stating it made him “physically ill even to contemplate having to give the vote to anyone who is in prison”. His administration ignored the European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2005, which declared that the UK's ban on any convicted prisoners voting in elections constituted a violation of Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights – a judgment confirmed in 2012. Parliament continues to deny prisoners the suffrage to vote; while a draft Bill was published in 2012 with regards to the ECHR ruling in 2005, the Bill gave three options: a ban for prisoners sentenced to 4 years or more, a ban for prisoners sentenced to more than 6 months, or a continuation of the blanket ban. Parliament has not made any effort to reintroduce the draft Bill, debate the issue since then, and has not announced any other plans to change legislation covering the ban – thus it remains like so many other issues, largely unheard of to the electorate, relatively undiscussed, and hidden amongst the looming shadows of troublesome topics which dare not enter parliament again.
If the right to vote would be given to all prisoners, it would truly put into practise the principle of “one man, one vote [one value]”, which inherently needs to be established – it should be enshrined within the foundations of British democracy, which currently completely overlooks the disenfranchisement of prisoners. The fundamentality of it boils down to the fact that a whole section of society is completely disenfranchised – the most significant part of a democracy, although not included in its explicit definition, is that all voices must be heard, to ensure that the true majority is actually represented. Otherwise, are we not just choosing to listen to whom are the more “privileged” – namely those who claim to represent us, but do not reflect the true racial or socio-economic make-up of our nation?
The idea of prison has primarily always been that if one commits a heinous crime, and is found guilty, then punishment and justice will be administered, but is “justice”, simply being selective with civic duties and human rights – maintaining that prisoners should pay their financial dues to society, whilst society refuses to represent them? Prisoners are overall unaccounted for within our democracy, unheard, and severely underrepresented. How can Britain claim to be a representative democracy if there is a sheer lack of both, representation, and democracy, within the incarceration system? We cannot claim be such, until all sections of society are sufficiently represented, including prisoners.
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