29/06/2011 00:01:00
Community penalties are now outperforming short prison sentences, according to statistics released today from the latest edition of the Prison Reform Trust’s Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile. If government succeeds in reforming the justice system, building on the success of community measures including diversion into health treatment where appropriate, and holding prison numbers to an unavoidable minimum, it could deliver on its promise of a “rehabilitation revolution”.
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07/04/2011 16:46:00
Thomas Hammarberg, the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, has underlined the position of the European Court of Human Rights that there should be no blanket ban on prisoners voting.
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15/02/2011 10:54:00
Before the debate on prisoners voting, the Prison Reform Trust was contacted by a wide range of people, many of whom work in the prison system. While politicians were being subjected to a self-styled whip by a few members of the unelected populist press, many of the emails we received were from prison governors or staff who see prisoners voting as a normal part of resettlement and citizenship.
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09/02/2011 11:23:00
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has spoken of the importance of regarding people in prison as citizens ahead of a debate and vote in Parliament tomorrow (Thursday 10 February) to retain the UK’s blanket ban on sentenced prisoners voting.
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25/01/2011 13:00:00
Instead of listening to MPs who would rather stick with the punishment of civic death, dating back to the Forfeiture Act of 1870, than comply with the 2005 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, the coalition government should listen to the advice of experienced prison governors and officials, past and present bishops to prisons and chief inspectors, electoral commissioners, legal and constitutional experts and most other European governments.
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20/12/2010 13:45:00
Commenting on the government's proposals for all offenders sentenced to four years or more to be automatically barred from registering to vote, Juliet Lyon said:
Enfranchising prisoners serving sentences of under four years is an important step in the right direction. However, it does not appear to meet the requirements of European Court judgments which state that the vast majority of prisoners should be able to vote.
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04/11/2010 12:46:00
People are sentenced to custody to lose their liberty, not to be stripped of other fundamental human rights. In South Africa, all prisoners have the right to vote. Handing down a landmark ruling in April 1999, the constitutional court of South Africa declared: "The universality of the franchise is important not only for nationhood and democracy. The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and personhood. Quite literally, it says that everybody counts."
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20/09/2010 13:20:00
At its meeting on 14-16 September the Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe strongly criticised the UK coalition government for failing to inform the Committee on how it intends to abide by a 2005 European Court ruling (Hirst No. 2) to allow sentenced prisoners to vote.
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10/06/2010 15:05:00
The government has said it will look "afresh" at how to comply with a European judgment on giving prisoners the vote.
On 10 June, justice minister Lord McNally told peers at question time: "The government is considering afresh the best way forward on the issue of prisoner voting rights."
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28/05/2010 15:09:00
As many as 73,000 people were unlawfully denied the right to the vote in the UK general and local elections on 6 May, after the government failed to overturn the blanket ban on sentenced prisoners voting.
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