Grand Chamber judgment: men and women in prison to vote

A coalition of senior cross party politicians, church leaders, ex-offenders, human rights groups and prison reformers welcome the judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that the blanket ban on sentenced prisoners voting violates article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
 
Speaking today the director of the Prison Reform Trust, Juliet Lyon, said:

‘This judgment confirms that people are sent to prison to lose their liberty not their identity or their citizenship. Prison has an important job to do to prevent the next victim and release people less, not more likely, to offend again.

Prisoners should be given every opportunity to payback for what they have done, take responsibility for their lives and make plans for effective resettlement and this should include maintaining their right to vote. It's time to stop pretending that people in prison don't exist.'

Bobby Cummines, the Chief Executive of Unlock said:

'The aim of our Prison Service must be to release ex-offenders to lead law-abiding lives in the community. But how can we make someone an upright citizen when the first thing we do in prison is to force that person to undergo a ‘civic death’. Government must now set the record straight.

If we want prison populations to go down and crime on the street to be reduced, prisons must be used as a place for rehabilitation where prisoners are trained to be decent citizens and that means ensuring that they know they are very much alive to society, this means equal voting rights.'

Over the last few years, the Barred from Voting campaign, organised by the Prison Reform Trust and Unlock, the national association of ex-offenders, has called for a review of the 135 year old law which means that when people are sentenced to prison, they are stripped of their voting rights. The law is a relic from the nineteenth century which dates back to the Forfeiture Act of 1870 and is based on a notion of civic death, a punishment entailing the withdrawal of citizenship rights.

In March last year in a case brought by a life sentenced prisoner, John Hirst, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the ban on sentenced prisoners voting violated Article Three of the European Convention on Human Rights. The government appealed against the unanimous judgment to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The appeal was held on April 27th just before the general election and the final decision was issued at 12 noon, local time, in Strasbourg today. The original verdict was upheld by 12-5.

The Barred from Voting campaign is also supported by senior Conservative politicians, including the former Home Secretary Lord Hurd, and senior Labour politicians such as David Winnick MP. The Liberal Democrats leader, Charles Kennedy, has said his party supports giving the vote to all prisoners. Other supporters include the Bishops of Prisons for the Anglican and Catholic churches, the current and former Chief Inspectors of Prisons, the president of the Prison Governors Association and the 50 members of the Penal Affairs Consortium.

A Barred from Voting campaign briefing states:

• The right to vote is an inalienable human right enshrined in Article Three of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
• The ban is not an effective deterrent and does not protect public safety. It is an unjust additional punishment imposed, but not articulated, by the courts.
• It contributes to the failure of imprisonment to rehabilitate six out of ten offenders. Giving prisoners the vote would encourage them to become responsible, law abiding citizens.
• If sentenced prisoners had the vote politicians would have to take more of an interest in prisons and the issues raised by prisoners.
• Denying sentenced prisoners the vote perpetuates social exclusion and undermines the government's civic renewal and active citizenship agenda by legitimizing the civic death of thousands of people who are sentenced to prison.
• Minority ethnic groups are disproportionately affected. Due to their over-representation in the prison population, black men are eight times as likely to be barred from voting as their white counterparts.
• The UK is one of only eight European countries automatically to disenfranchise sentenced prisoners.

Today’s judgment will be good news for the many senior managers in the Prison Service who believe that voting rights and representation form part of the process of preparing prisoners for resettlement in their communities. They acknowledge that granting prisoners the right to vote would not threaten public safety. The government has already clarified that people currently serving the sentence of intermittent custody can vote when not actually in jail.

The full judgment is available at: http://www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Press/PressReleasesCMS.htm