http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8503370.stm

Yes but while they are in gaol, they have to accept that there are some restrictions on their rights otherwise will imprisonment be against their right to associate or move freely?

And this is why the European institutions are held in general contempt by the British public.

With rights comes responsabilities.

I agree that if convicted that you lose certain rights like the right to vote, but once you get out you can resume these rights.

I don't know if it's just the state of politics in the UK or what, but my initial reaction is just 'Why not let them vote?'

Especially when you consider that they're showing more of an interest than some of the people in the street (not that I blame those people, I'm one of them)

Somebody who got a suspended sentence for downloading child porn (for instance) would presumably be allowed to vote ( ), what's so different just because someone's occupying a prison cell? Especially if they get quite a bit of leave from it in some cases

One specific right is removed when sentencing an offender to prison, that is the right to liberty. This is done on the basis that a wider society has a right to protect itself in general from the naughty, a duty to correct misbehaviour, and an interest in deterring potential offenders. Other rights would need to meet similar criteria in order to qualify for suspension under law.

Society has no reason to fear these people's votes, and little to gain in terms of correctional value from suspending such right. Almost no criminals will be deterred from mugging old ladies by the thought that they would be ineligible to vote at the next election if caught and jailed. It is therefore vindictive and unreasonable to suspend their voting rights.

I would caution those among you who are so eager to restrict the human rights of others to consider what a corrosive effect this has upon your own. The purpose of having a human right is that you gain it simply by being a human, not by being a model citizen. And in virtue of this, any right you cherish should not be suspended on anybody's part unless there is a compelling reason to remove that specific right. To do otherwise is to devalue your own rights by undermining their very basis.

Nicely summed up IMO, +1

Hang on. If I break the law, get found out and sentenced to time in jail, I expect to forfeit most of my normal rights. That should include whether I'm allowed to vote or not.

Right now, as I see it, most crims banged up in jug are better off than me. While I still have the right to move freely and don't get locked in for much of the day, I'm not able to afford a lot of the things that prisoners are allowed to have these days. It appears to me - and don't accuse me of being a Daily Mail reader - that prison is more of a holiday camp than a punishment.

If we're going to start banging on about human rights for convicted criminals, then we're lost. We may as well let the lunatics run the asylum. Oh, hang on...

I forgot to add before that the human rights angle means little to me in prisoners being allowed to vote (or not). I just can't see why it's such a big deal really, when so many people dismiss voting anyway and few prisoners will ever care, probably.

As long as you understand that this means you are not committed to the idea of inalienable rights acquired simply by belonging to the human race, then there is nothing wrong with you holding that opinion. If you think you have a right to things like fair trials, privacy, security of property etc though. you need to think about why you think people have those rights. Especially if you want to enter into politics, which I believe you do?

The law and constitution (we have one even if it's not published in a single document) do not recognise your point though. They assume that human rights are acquired by being human, and also that taking any of hem away is a serious business that must be justified according to such criteria as I have indicated above.


Well that's just knee jerk reactionary stuff tbh. I wouldn't dream of trading in my life for prison, and unless you have made some terrible decisions with your life, I believe the same goes for everyone here. Before accusing people of having a cushy life, please take into account their suicide rate compared to the rest of us.


If you can't afford soap and a comb, then I pity you. If you think that being locked up for many hours a day in a small room that smells of wee, and fearing rape or stabbing whenever you leave that sanctuary, is some form of holiday camp experience, then I advise you to find a more reliable travel agent.


You have three alternative:
1. The prisoners are human, so they deserve human rights, and none of those rights can be taken from them without good reason (I would further posit that not liking criminals, and wanting them to feel generally bad, is not a good reason in this context).
2. Prisoners surrender their humanity upon conviction and are subsequently subhuman.
3. You don't believe in human rights at all.

I would definitely want to know which of these positions you hold before I would consider voting for you.

I thought you could lose your civil rights following a conviction if the judges established so. Would you let someone in jail be in a trial court jury?

Voting is an adult human right. If children are denied the ability to vote because of immaturity, then why not have another condition applied to criminals?

Hmm tricky.

It's my understanding that prisoners have long been denied the right to vote in this country. It's one of the rights you loose as a result of being convicted of a crime. Whether that is morally right or wrong is up for debate.

ShockWaffle, would you happen to know which human right does denying a convicted criminal remove? The right to self determination?
It could be said that they have come to their current position, and the various consequences that entails, through their own actions and by those actions have denied themselves the right to vote. For the majority of prisoners that right has not been revoked permanently but can be regained through good behaviour.
I would argue that if the person in question is distressed by their loss of the vote then it would provide a motivation to modify their behaviour in order to accelerate the return of that right along with their liberty.

I don't think it can be argued that the penalties for committing a crime serious enough to warrant imprisonment are widely unknown to the adult population of the United Kingdom. It could therefore be said that the criminal has in fact chosen to deny themselves certain rights. I cannot deny that there may have been coercion involved in some cases of criminality (gang related crimes for instance). However, at the end of the day the individual has chosen the law of the gang and not of the land and must accept the consequences of their actions.

I would also like to suggest an argument based on societies right to protect itself from criminals as posited earlier in this thread.
The official prison population in England and Wales is in the region of 80 - 85k at the moment (clickey). Prison populations obviously vary depending on the size of the prison but we're seldom talking about less than 200 people. Now, how would those peoples votes be counted? Would they have a postal vote for the constituency where they lived before conviction or would they have a vote for the constituency that the prison resides in?
Now, one must ask how would convicted criminals be likely to vote? Could the prison vote swing a marginal seat in either of the voting models suggested above? Regular voter apathy has made it possible for relatively small swings in voting have a disproportionately large effect.
Could we find ourselves in a position where the prison vote becomes important enough to MP's that they would actively court it? How would that manifest itself?
Now, while a relaxation of some of the more draconian and frankly barmy laws enacted to protect us from, for example, terrorist and illegal file sharers would probably be rather welcome. What else would we get into the bargain?
Does a society have a right to protect itself from having an agenda set by people who have been convicted of a crime in the eyes of that society? <insert Tony Blair joke>

Having fortunately never been a guest at her majesties pleasure I cannot say whether or not prison is as cushy or as terrible as the different factions of that argument would have me believe. Like many things I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between.
Should prisoners be given the right to vote? To my mind the answer is no, not while they are in prison. Should the right to vote be permanently withdrawn from those who have committed a crime? Again, the answer is no. Once a prisoner has served their debt to society then they should be able to vote again.

Those are very good points

Kind of, you have to bear in mind that rights are notional, they don't exist in nature as such. This means that they are a construct (thus Jeremy Bentham famously referred to rights as nonsense, and natural rights as 'nonsense on stilts'). This means that we get to decide where rights can apply, which is why we attach many of them to another notional construct - society/the state/the crown. What happens here is justified then on the grounds that the criminal's right to self determination/liberty runs contrary to society's right to protection from criminal harm. The criminal's right is presumed to be effectively cancelled out by the more pressing rights of others to which he represents a threat.

Rights are easy to cancel out when this is a result of conflict with other rights (my liberty of speech loses out your right not to have me standing outside your door demanding your death and waving a noose for instance). But using soething other than a right to cancel out a right is much more difficult.


The problem there is that human rights are commonly (I understand), legally - at least in the Anglo Saxon world - held to be inalienable. Therefore, nobody is allowed to take one away from you, nor are you able to throw them away, either on purpose or by accident. Only by ceasing to be human do you lose a human right, or else it can no longer be called a human right.


The UK parliament has 659 members, voted for by several tens of millions, so it would have to be a very large prison, or an exceptionally marginal seat.
If we take people's likely voting habits into account when we decide who can vote, then perhaps we should refuse the mandate for idiots and bigots. Racists should be struck from the electoral role, and anyone without a university education. This is what happens when you make voting a privilege that people qualify for, rather than a universal mandate for all adults.
Prisoners would probably be postal voters. That wouldn't stop them being the factor in some swing constituencies, there are places where lots of villains live after all.
If our nation of 50+ million people can come under the political control of a dispersed population of 100,000 or so, then democracy is the problem, not rights.

This is already the case. The "first past the post" system currently used means that the upcoming general election may well be decided by less than a million voters in marginal seats. The campaigns of the main parties will be concentrated on those voters, while those of us in "safe seats" can vote any way we like and virtually make no difference at all.