“The UK is coming under pressure to allow prison inmates to vote in elections, because according to campaign groups and the European Court of Human Rights, the human rights of prisoners denied a vote are being infringed. Lord Ramsbotham, a former Chief Inspector of prisons is leading the charge, along with the activists from the Prison Reform Trust, Unlock and Barred from Voting.
Ramsbotham is lockstep with bureaucrats and those who are opposed to the concept of prison generally in believing it is a great injustice that the government has not allowed prisoners to vote, especially after the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights decided it was unlawful to deny all sentenced prisoners voting rights in UK elections. Today he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
‘The Grand Chamber of the European Court, in rejecting the government’s appeal against its ruling, said that there is no place under the convention system for automatic disfranchisement based purely on what might offend public opinion.’
Ramsbotham and the European Court are wrong. This is another example of entitlements being wrongly defined as human rights. Voting is not a human right, it is an entitlement granted to those in society who respect its laws. People are not born with the right to vote, otherwise we would be carted off the polling station straight from the maternity wing. So this should not be a matter for the European Court in the first place. But as is the way with supranational bureaucracy, mission creep is seeing an increasing labelling of entitlements as rights, bringing control of certain matters under legal jurisdiction and the result is a perverse undermining the rule of law and ability of the state to impose appropriate sanctions on offenders.
Men and women who have been handed custodial sentences are not in prision because they have ‘offended public opinion’ as Ramsbotham ludicrously stated on the Today programme. Such an assertion is idiotic in the extreme. They are there because they have broken the law of the land by committing criminal offences that have caused harm or loss to other members of society. After trial by a jury of their peers and being found guilty of a crime, inmates have been subsequently denied their liberty and ability to participate in society in order to protect the public, punish them for their offence and, if prison actually worked properly, rehabilitate them so they do not offend again.
Why should people who have broken the law and are serving a custodial sentence be allowed to vote for those representatives who we ask in principle to make that law? The removal of voting entitlements from offenders whose crimes were so serious it warranted imprisonment is proportional and entirely appropriate. Many people rightly argue that rights should never be separated from responsibilities and that society has to be able to impose consequences on those whose actions harm society. But that argument confuses the matter at hand because as I said above this issue of votes for prisoners is not one of human rights, it is about the removal of an entitlement granted by the law of the land. Remember, the state cannot grant us rights, they are ours by default. Don’t be confused by it. Prisoners should not be entitled to vote”.
Good attention grabbing headline. However, what lets it down is that the post supposedly supporting it is riddled with so many holes that it fails to stand up and is easily knocked down. Actually, the charge is being led by myself and supported by the others. Unlike this statement which is not supported by cited examples: “are opposed to the concept of prison generally”. In other words, it is an unfair attack.
“Ramsbotham and the European Court are wrong”. Again strong words. However, they are followed by unsupporting reasons with no foundation in law or fact. “This is another example of entitlements being wrongly defined as human rights”. The author has failed to cite a prior example or examples for comparison. Quite apart from it being nonsensensical in itself. The legal maxim “ignorance of the law is no excuse” applies, and the author is blissfully ignorant of the subject. Wikipedia provides: “Entitlement is a guarantee of access to benefits because of rights or by agreement through law. It also refers, in a more casual sense, to someone's belief that one is deserving of some particular reward or benefit. It is often used pejoratively in common parlance (e.g. a "sense of entitlement")”. Article 3 of the First Protocol of the Convention is the highest legal authority in Europe for the proposition that voting is a human right. “Voting is not a human right, it is an entitlement granted to those in society who respect its laws”. As said, voting is a human right. And human rights are not dependent upon a human being respecting a State’s laws. The author has attempted to insert a morality clause in place of the absolute right in an attempt to limit its scope.
“People are not born with the right to vote, otherwise we would be carted off the polling station straight from the maternity wing”. All humans are born with the rights under the Convention, although a State has a margin of appreciation to the extent, for example, by a requirement that the voter reach the age of 18 years old. “So this should not be a matter for the European Court in the first place”. This is correct to the extent that s.3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 should have been made compatible with Article 3 of the First Protocol when the Human Rights Act 1998 was passed. So, Parliament failed in the first place to address this anomaly. In the second place, the High Court failed to do the right thing and give a declaration of incompatibly. It was only in the last resort that the jurisdiction of the ECtHR was sought to find the UK guilty of a human rights violation and informed to rectify this breach of human rights or else. The author claims that the Court’s decision “is a perverse undermining the rule of law and ability of the state to impose appropriate sanctions on offenders”. The Court applied the rule of law to the situation because it was the State which was undermining it with an illegitimate sanction. The State may impose appropriate sanctions, but not inappropriate ones. The Court is the final arbitrator of whether a citizen is a victim of State abuse of his or her human rights.
“Men and women who have been handed custodial sentences are not in prision because they have ‘offended public opinion’ as Ramsbotham ludicrously stated on the Today programme”. No, he did not say this. He was quoting from the Court judgment where the Court stated that it rejected the UK’s claim that the disenfranchisement could be justified because enfranchisement of prisoners might offend public opinion. The Court placed the prisoners human right above any actual or believed public opinion which stated that prisoners are not worthy of the vote. Yes, “Such an assertion is idiotic in the extreme”, and I wonder why the author made it?
“After trial by a jury of their peers and being found guilty of a crime, inmates have been subsequently denied their liberty and ability to participate in society in order to protect the public, punish them for their offence and, if prison actually worked properly, rehabilitate them so they do not offend again”. Prisoners are members of the public, as such they are part of society. The sentence of the court is the punishment, and imprisonment ensures that the sentence is carried out. This is justice being seen to be done. Reading comments on blogs and forums on this subject, sadly far too many people labour under the false belief that prisoners go to prison for punishment and not as a punishment. The Court stated that prisoners only lose their liberty and not their human rights. By obtaining the vote for prisoners, prisons would get the reforms necessary to assist in prisoners rehabilitation. It is a sad state of affairs when MPs are so frightened of losing votes themselves that they try to ignore their guilt in conspiring to deny prisoner their human right to the vote.
“Why should people who have broken the law and are serving a custodial sentence be allowed to vote for those representatives who we ask in principle to make that law?”. It is for the electorate to choose who represents them, and not for the MPs to choose the electorate. This is what democracy is all about. Democracy is weakened when a section of the public is disenfranchised. And, because the highest legal authority in Europe has decided the issue. The rule of law is weakened when the Minister legally responsible for ensuring the human rights of all UK citizens, including prisoners, fails to do his duty and implement the Court judgment. The author is claiming that prisoners unlawfulness is unacceptable conduct, by the same token Jack Straw’s conduct is unacceptable. He must rectify the situation, or resign and allow somebody else with more responsibility to do the job. An irresponsible Minister of Justice is justice denied.
The author’s conclusion fails to deliver the goods. “The removal of voting entitlements from offenders whose crimes were so serious it warranted imprisonment is proportional and entirely appropriate. Many people rightly argue that rights should never be separated from responsibilities and that society has to be able to impose consequences on those whose actions harm society. But that argument confuses the matter at hand because as I said above this issue of votes for prisoners is not one of human rights, it is about the removal of an entitlement granted by the law of the land. Remember, the state cannot grant us rights, they are ours by default. Don’t be confused by it. Prisoners should not be entitled to vote”. It is said that writers should only write about subjects that they are familiar with. “The removal of voting entitlements from offenders whose crimes were so serious it warranted imprisonment is proportional and entirely appropriate”. A reading of the Hirst v UK(No2) judgment will show that the UK argued these proportional and appropriate elements but the Court judged them to be neither proportional nor appropriate in a democracy applying the rule of law. The author is obviously confused by the subject, and I hope that this fisking teaches him a lesson, and that he will now concede that his previously held views have been shown to be in error, and that he would rather not share in the government’s humiliation any further.
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