[Gayle]

I appreciate that there are people in prison who have been wrongly incarcerated but if you try to put provisos dependent on crime you would have more problems than if you just put a blanket ban on prisoners being able to vote or not whilst in prison. For instance, you argue the case for the wrongly incarcerated woman who is in there because she is believed to have killed her child yet didn't - how do you decide whether she should have the vote between her and some woman who is mentally unstable and really did kill her child? Whether she did or didn't, the fact that she is tried and found guilty means that she is in prison for killing a child therefore should not have anything beyond basic rights.

Education is recognised, I would say, as a basic right for all people so if a prisoner wishes to better themselves then they should be allowed it. There is no debate about whether education should be removed from prisons and I understand that many prisons, if not all, run educational courses.

So I am not arguing for the removal of those rights. Undoubtedly you'll now start arguing that I'm moving the goalposts of 'basic rights' - I'm not, I just didn't feel it necessary to list everything that is considered a basic right in the first instance.

Plus, I am not arguing about the definition of basic rights, I am arguing that whatever the definition there is no way that voting can be considered a basic right - being able to vote is not an essential in ones life, you do not need to vote to be able to exist. Therefore, it is one of the many priviledges that should be removed when someone is imprisoned!