Amina Rawat
In 2005, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the blanket ban on prisoners voting, imposed in 1870, was an infringement of their rights.
This was following an ex-prisoner, John Hirst, bringing a case to the High Court in 2001 challenging the ban on prisoners voting under the Representation of the People Act 1983. Hirst was jailed for manslaughter; for hacking his landlady to death with an axe in 1979. He was released in 2004 after serving 10 years more than his original sentence due to violent crimes committed whilst in prison. However, his claim was dismissed by Lord Justice Kennedy and he pursued the case to the ECHR which ruled that the ban breached the right to free elections under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Now the House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly against the European court, and in support of maintaining the ban. The MPs backed a motion opposing the ECHR ruling by a 234 to 22 – a majority of 212. At present in the UK, only prisoners on remand are allowed to vote. The European courts have set a deadline of August for the UK to act on its ruling striking down the ban, otherwise, Britain faces sanctions. David Cameron said he did not see why the UK should have to change its policy, adding; “But I’m the prime minister. We’re in a situation where the courts are telling us we are going to be fined unless we change this. I find it thoroughly unsatisfactory. In my view, prisoners should not get the vote, and that’s that.”
Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, said that Britain cannot simply ignore the European court ruling. He said it is Britain’s “international obligation” to comply with the court’s judgement since the UK had been a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. It underpins the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog, which has 47 members.
A number of MPs, including Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, also viewed that the UK could not “pick and choose” which parts of the European Convention of Human Rights it subscribed to. Mr Brake said a ban on prisoners voting was “illogical” and the right to vote should be seen as part of the process of rehabilitation. He told MPs “Prisoners have committed a crime, their punishment is to lose their liberty – that is fair and just. What is then gained by seeking to inflict civil death on them?”
Bobby Cummines, 58, who spent 13 years in prison for offences including armed robbery said “Prisoners are more political than people outside. They have Radio 4 on all day, they read all the papers. What happens when people feel they don’t have a voice? Look at Northern Ireland – they get bombs and guns. ..If people feel they are excluded, that’s when you get riots and disturbances. Depriving prisoners of their liberty is not the same as denying them their rights…If you tell people they’re not part of society, there’s another society that will welcome them with open arms. It’s called the criminal fraternity.”
Having worked in prisons for the past two years, I agree that the deprivation of liberty, where prisoners are often locked in a 6 by 10 ft cell for at least 16 hours a day, is enough of a punishment, with some prisoners being locked 24 hours a day. Incarceration and other draconian measures such as antiterrorism laws in the UK marginalizes or alienates people and only treats the symptoms of crime not the cause. The ban on prisoners’ right to vote will only serve to perpetuate and aggravate crime when a significant part of imprisonment is supposed to be about rehabilitation back into society and prevent further offending behaviour.
To deny prisoners the right to vote contradicts Cameron’s concept of the Big Society (which is about empowering individuals) and Britain as a prime example of a democracy. Same goes for India, boasted to be the “largest democracy in the world”, with its absurd treatment of prisoners. I remember my visit to Srinagar Central Jail. Although I was not allowed to roam around the jail and talk to inmates there, I could imagine the conditions they faced there and the basic rights they were denied after having witnessed the pitiable conditions of the patients next door at the psychiatric hospital.
At the prison I was visiting a friend who had been detained under the antiterrorism laws in Kashmir. It was he himself who went to the police station to enquire why the police had been at his shop whilst he had gone out. He was not able to talk about his experiences under detention, and I doubt he will to his family either.
Fortunately for him, a few days after my visit he was released. Apart from harbouring resentment at the government, being a docile man, he will continue to be a law abiding citizen and will not kick up a fuss for being wrongly imprisoned. However, he would be one of the few, many others who perhaps would have faced greater injustice, torture or death in custody, they or their families are unlikely to be so abiding. India is predicted to becoming one of the world’s greatest economies, surpassing even UK, here is its chance to also become one of the greatest democracies by not following the footsteps of the UK.
