David Cameron will presumably be spending today retching into a bucket at his Oxfordshire home. Having said that the thought of prisoners voting made him ‘physically sick’, he will not be pleased by the Government’s proposal to grant the vote to the hundred or so prisoners who are out of jail at any one time – this in reaction to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled that a blanket ban on prisoners’ voting is a breach of human rights.
It is pretty par for the course for the ECHR – standing up for criminals while failing to do much to ensure free speech in Russia and so on. But why the Government’s drawn-out battle to resist what would be a pretty small and unimportant change to the prison regime? At the cost of further stirring the contents of the Cameron tummy why not be done with it and grant all prisoners the right to vote?
What is the government scared of? That Ian Huntley and his fellow lifers are going to set up a political party which succeeds in legalising murder? If there were a constituency of Dartmoor Central the prisoner vote might just conceivably swing a tight election, but in reality there are no practical consequences from giving prisoners the vote. It is purely symbolic. Who knows, it might even do some prisoners good to take part in a small act of civic life, just as it ought to do them good to work.
There are far bigger issues to worry about in our criminal justice system. Why, of the 400 British Isis fighters who have returned to this country, have only 14 been jailed when all of them, by virtue of travelling to Isis-controlled territory, have committed a criminal offence? Why, in the past decade, have 95 murderers, rapists and other life prisoners been released on parole and allowed to commit offences which have resulted in a second life sentence? Why are our prisons still awash with drugs?
I can’t help seeing that the Government’s stand against giving prisoners the vote as a pathetic attempt to convince us that it is being tough on crime when in reality most of the criminal justice system is under the influence of dripping-wet liberals. I would feel better if it were the other way around – that Government earn its liberal brownie points by granting all prisoners the vote – while simultaneously ensuring that the constituency of the incarcerated really does include everyone who deserves to be there.
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