One issue which Shami Chakrabarti raised in her excellent Cumberland Lodge Annual Lecture recently was whether prisoners should have the right to vote in Parliamentary and local elections.She quoted the common sense view of her nine -year old son: “Of course they should. They are human beings and it would be wrong to kill them”. If we agree that a prison affords protection to its inmates as well as provides punishment, then of course we are recognising their humanity. Shami’s central tenet is that human rights cannot be measured on some morality chart, ‘good people’ being more human than ‘bad’ people. That is a reasonable point and I agree with it. In a society which has made giant strides in terms of fairness on gender, race and disability issues, it is logical to say that all human beings share common features and must not be ranked in terms of fundamental human rights.
There is, however, a problem about votes for prisoners. They are sent to prison because a court of law has deemed their offence against society to be serious enough to warrant a period of withdrawal from society’s privileges. Voting in Parliamentary and local authority elections is a moment when we supposedly law-abiding citizens can each make our small contribution towards democracy. By electing representative M.P.s and Councillors we are part of the legislative process, because these people will pass the laws and regulations by which the rest of us must, as responsible citizens, abide. Is it fair or logical to permit people who have subverted the law to be part of the process that creates these laws?
My liberal instincts tell me that Shami is correct and that the shared humanity of every person in the world means that no one has the right to deny anyone the democratic rights of free expression and participation in the electoral process. But another human right is the right to liberty and this we circumscribe every time a judge or a magistrate commits a guilty person to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Would we extend the human right to freedom to everyone now incarcerated in a prison? Presumably not. By the same token is it a denial of human rights to say to offendersthat they may not for the period of their detention take part in the creation of law, and that therefore they may not vote in national and local elections?It is a conundrum, but one in the end where I suspect my reason gets the better of my heart. Another brilliant lecture from Shami Chakrabarti and I will probably see why I am wrong.
Alastair Niven
Principal
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