Oct 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition
One inmate’s appeal is thrown out, but changes beckon
“VOTES for paedophiles” is unlikely ever to be a popular rallying cry, and few mourned the dismissal of Peter Chester’s case before the High Court on October 28th. Thirty-two years ago Mr Chester raped and strangled his seven-year-old niece. Still in prison, he wants to vote, which the law currently forbids. He had hoped that the European Convention on Human Rights might allow him to claim that right, but Mr Justice Burton, judging the case, felt otherwise. Mr Chester and his fellow lags will remain disenfranchised.
Britain is unusual in Europe for applying a near-blanket ban on prisoners voting. According to the Prison Reform Trust, a charity which wants this reversed, the policy is shared by only six other EU countries, mainly eastern European ones. The rest either allow prisoners full voting rights or restrict the franchise only partially. This usually involves taking into account the length of the prisoner’s sentence (as also happens in Australia and New Zealand) or giving judges the discretion to impose a ban as an extra penalty. America, exceptional as ever in penal policy, bans inmates from voting in most states and even bans former inmates in a few.
The agitation of penal reformers is not shared by psephologists, who note the tiddly numbers involved. John Curtice, an election guru at Strathclyde University, points out that even if every prisoner were enfranchised and made use of his vote (which he doubts they all would), it would average only about 100 extra ballots in each constituency. “The emotional heat generated by this issue is in inverse proportion to the numbers involved,” he concludes, adding, when pressed, that prisoners’ votes would most probably be Labour-leaning. They would almost certainly be counted in prisoners’ home areas rather than in the constituencies where prisons are located, to avoid skewing results in areas with big jails.
Despite the small numbers and this week’s High Court ruling, the government is girding itself to act. A ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in 2004 found that Britain’s blanket ban breached democratic provisions laid down in the convention. Following an unsuccessful appeal in 2005, the government has spent four years pondering what changes to make, provoking a rebuke this summer from EU bigwigs about the “significant delay” in obeying the judgment. It has grudgingly proposed various options for partial enfranchisement based on sentence length, which it hopes will be enough to satisfy the European Court. As the chart shows, even the most radical restoration of rights, covering those serving up to four years, would give the vote to fewer than half of the 64,000 or so prisoners who are currently disenfranchised.
It seems decreasingly likely that inmates will get the chance to vote in Britain’s general election next year, which must take place by June 3rd. If that deadline is missed, the matter is likely to fall to the Tories. David Cameron’s party is no keener on votes for paedophiles than the current government, and prisoners can expect them to be no more generous.
They may in fact do even less. Senior Tories are talking about staging a parliamentary debate and vote (possibly a free one, in which Mps could vote according to their conscience rather than their party’s line) on the subject. This might be a useful way of offloading responsibility for a measure that is hardly a vote-winner. Strategists are hopeful that even a negative vote might be enough to keep the European judges at bay. One of the complaints the court made in its 2004 ruling was that Britain’s policy seemed to have emerged by accident rather than through democratic deliberation. A debate and decision by MPs might just satisfy that objection. Voting rights for prisoners could yet slip away.
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