Lord Woolf on prisoners votes
"I just can't understand, quite frankly, the antipathy towards it. What we want to do is make prisoners much more responsible, and giving them the responsibility of voting seems to me wholly consistent with that. I think it is very unfortunate that there is all this hyped up fuss about it. I don't know how many prisoners would vote, but I think they should have that opportunity."
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
Another thing worth quoting:
ReplyDelete"It has long been my belief that judges should know much more about what happens and the consequence of their sentencing. Of course you wonder what's happening. Having been involved in Strangeways, you then realise just how important our prison system is to the administration of justice and to the protection of the public. You can either use it in a constructive way, or in a destructive way. During my inquiry into Strangeways I became aware of the terrible waste of resources. I was very conscious that if you treat people badly they don't respond positively. You've got to let them retain a sense of decency, a sense of being a human being. You can't treat people as though they are animals or they will respond in that way."