If prisoners are not allowed to vote in this years general election, it will break European Law:

In 2005, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights declared that it was unlawful to deny all sentenced prisoners voting rights in UK elections…

The Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe expressed “serious concern” that there was a “significant risk” the election might fail to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights. (BBC)

Frankly, I couldn’t care less. Criminals who are currently serving their custodial sentence do not deserve to have the vote; they have to right to it. If they had obeyed the law, they wouldn’t be in prison. How can they in all seriousness be given a say in who makes the laws? Surely that is inviting trouble!

As I have written before, once their sentence has been completed and they have been released, then they have paid their debt to society. They have completed the requirements of the justice system and get all of their rights back – including the franchise.

But when they commit a crime, they are beaking the social nexus by which we are all linked. Rights do not exist independent of responsibilities – and one, very basic, responsibility is to not break the law. Once they have been convicted and given a custodial sentence, their rights are extremely limited for good reason.

If it wrong to disenfrachise prisoners, surely it is far worse to take away their freedom of movement? Voting is on a par with liberty. They forfeited their right to both liberty and the franchise the moment they commited their crime. Anyway, many of these people probably wouldn’t bother to vote if they were outside.

There is no way that any intelligent and rational person could ever consider giving convicted criminals currently serving their sentence the vote. Voting may be a right, temporarily losing that right is part of their penalty for breaking the law.