Prisoners to get the vote
 

Read in the paper today that they are trying to decide whether prisoners should get the vote or not. Apparently, the fact that they aren't allowed to vote means that there is a breach in their human rights. Well, excuse me, but isn't that one of the points of being put in prison you have no rights?

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Or, as it pointed out in the paper, killed someone - don't see why they should have any human rights after that!

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I thought that was part of the punishment of going to prison, having your rights taken away, all rights. Having said that, the vote count would go up if they did, or is that what they're thinking.

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:eek: Dangerous thought Willow the could even (in theroy) become an MP and then would have to be taken from one prison to another prison (house of commons) :engsmil:

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Well thats all of us so far that think prisoners should have no, well maybe very few rights.

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Or even the Big Brother house :D

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Wasn't he a hunger striker in prison for some IRA attack?

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I have to agree that prisoners should not be allowed to vote. They seem to have more rights than the rest of us these days, this country is definitely soft on the people who least deserve it.

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Whilst there are possibly some prisoners in prison who are reasonable and of sound mind - possibly they committed relatively minor crimes like theft or non payment of council tax, etc. There are undoubtedly some people in there who are seriously unhinged - i.e. pathologically insane people like murderers etc. Can we for one minute imagine that they can make a reasoned, impartial decision about who should be running the country.

Plus, I can just see some of the election campaigning now as prospective candidates go into prisons and promise them pardons or investigations if they vote for them.

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Quite an ironic name for a prison with hunger strikers, Maize :D

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If we are to decide who has, or hasn't the right to vote, where will it end? Unemployed people, the very elderly, the illiterate?


I thought impisonment was the punishment.

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but yet there are comparitively NORMAL people voting BNP on the outside...those people seem unhinged in my opinion
something doesnt seem quite right there

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I do think that unless someone is criminally insane, who would anyway be in a secure hospital like Broadmoor not prison, prisoners should have the right to vote.

Remember the best criminals are the ones that don't get caught, and already have the right to vote.

Why are you so against it Gayle? Do you think that anybody that is currently imprisoned from St Andrew's ward, the ward you are contesting, is more likely to vote Conservative?:D

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what about all those people who are out and about ,with their ankles tagged?

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Do you think that murderers are of sound mind? What sort of prison are they in?

I'm so against it because I think that if someone has been found guilty of a crime and sent to prison then they should not have any rights other than basic needs, i.e. bed, food, etc. Prison is not a holiday camp but from what we're told they're turning into them.

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So if the little old lady who was imprisoned for not paying her council tax last year, who a lot of people hailed on here as a heroine, happened to have been in prison during an election, she should not be allowed a vote?


Still not convinced. Taking someones freedom away is the punishment. We might as well throw people into dark Satanic prisons, and have the gentle folk go to gawp at them like they used to do in Victorian times.

Example. A woman is found guilty of wounding her husband in self defence, after suffering years of abuse. Should she have her democratic right to vote taken away?

Charity apparently begins and ends at home.:(

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..and yes Willow, I do know prisoners don't have this right at present. My use of 'if' was rhetorical.;)

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Yes but the whole idea of being locked up is to take rights away, one of those rights is the right to vote, its been decided in the past , and i'm more interested in the motives behind the sugestion to let them vote. Whos sugesting it and why.
People on a tag have limited rights granted back to them, so I see no reason why they shouldn't vote.

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All rights? What if the little old lady/council tax heroine needed medical treatment?

Should people in prison not have the right to health care, regardless of the severity of their crimes?

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No not all rights, but in the past someone decided one of those rights is the right to vote. if it's up for discussion again now the original reasons for not allowing it and the reasons for bringing it up for change should be made clear.

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well i think its disgusting that prisoners get to play the lottery and keep their winnings never mind been allowed to vote

a prison could in theory upset a local election if they all agreed to vote for one particular party

say preston prisoners got to vote there would be a few thousand votes that if these people were at home wouldnt exist because they wouldnt be in the preston area

anyway the idea of prison is to take peoples liberties away not to pamper them

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I don't think it would work like that. I presume they would get a postal vote, and it would count to their home constituency tally.

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well thats ok then because the way roya mail is these days its unlikely the vites will make it back to the ballot lol

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then you had better watch out gayle !there is more of them than us!:p

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Was thinking a little along these lines myself when spotted this post. The problem I have is that I can always see two sides to a discussion and do agree that criminals who have committed terrible acts against the society we have founded, should not be allowed to have a voting opinion anymore. There are some prisoners however that are in there due to other types of crime, such as some pensioner who,as a protest, refused to pay their council tax. Will be many more like this I suspect, and would not object to a vote from these people. That, to me, means that the prisoners would have to be individually assessed for who can and who can't.
Just wondered if people under psychiatric care are still allowed the vote and sectioned people who have been put there for their own safety, e.g. eating disorders etc ??

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Whoops sorry, just read the second page now and obviously lots of you thought along the same lines as I did.

Re: Prisoners to get the vote
 

In toto there are the following the exemptions to voting amongst the adult population:
Aliens (non-British, non-Commonwealth, non-Irish citizens)
Involuntary patients in mental institutions
Members of the House of Lords
Convicted persons sentenced to custody "at Her Majesty's Pleasure"
Persons convicted of corrupt electoral practices

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Rindy I think you spelt it wrong in the last line it should read:-

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Lol. I was just about to say but it was cut and pasted!

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Thanks Garinda .. so could be an argument for patients in mental institutions then as not all completely off their marbles ?

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What makes someone who refuses to pay Council Tax a heroine? If it was me, or someone like me refusing to pay, you would call me a scrounging ******.

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Ridiculous to even contemplate giving prisoners the right to vote :mad: but half the liberal, fence sitting, politically correct, pratts that are in power will probably bleat on about it so much that there'll be a change to the law.

Bring back the death penalty, there thats' my right to freedom of speech used!

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They have the right to health care - I said in one of my earlier posts that prisoners have and should continue to get basic rights - i.e. food, bed and I could have added basic health care. What they shouldn't have is freedom and a vote is a freedom of sorts. People should stop confusing the provision of basic human rights with freedom.

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Without naming names, I was alluding to some of the comments that were posted on here last year, about a particular case.

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[quoye=Gayle] I'm so against it because I think that if someone has been found guilty of a crime and sent to prison then they should not have any rights other than basic needs, i.e. bed, food, etc.[/quote]


Sorry, I didn't realise that the 'etc.' was in fact the provision of basic health care.

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Sorry, I didn't realise that the 'etc.' was in fact the provision of basic health care.[/quote]

The etc was supposed to include all things that would come under the category heading of basic human rights, for example if a prisoner collapsed with a heart attack I'd expect them to be helped, but if a prisoner asked for a boob job whilst in prison then I'd have to say they shouldn't be allowed it.

Basic rights means anything that is essential to our well being. Being able to vote is a priviledge that we shouldn't allow to be abused.

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Bread and water it is then.

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If it were up to me, yes! lol

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Would you be organising trips out on Sundays, so gentle folk could look pityingly down their noses at the poor, sordid wretches?:p

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No, I'd keep them locked in their cells so that honest, decent citizens never caught sight of them and only allowed out for a brief walk around the yard once a day for exercise. ;)

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So mother's who have wrongly been incarcerated for killing their children, or people imprisoned for non-payement of council tax would receive the same draconian punishments?

All sounds a bit too much like the old Tories return to Victorian values to me.


What next work houses for the poor?;)

Re: Prisoners to get the vote
 

For a start it was an attempt at humour because I thought you were joking along with me.

Secondly, if they have been incarcerted for killing their children at what point can you define whether it's wrongly or not? Surely anyone proven to be wrongly incarcerated would be freed and would therefore get all priviledges restored.

Finally, you've taken a point and twisted it again. My point is that prisoners are in there for a reason and that is not to get the priviledges that we none prisoners get - voting is not a basic need therefore, prisoners should not be allowed to vote. Prison should be a punishment and a time for reflection on their crimes. It should not be some woolly liberal fun house where they get the same freedoms as the rest of us.

I'll stand by this point as long as you want to keep arguing it but you're not changing my stance on the original issue by bringing in further convoluted arguments.

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Well we'll have to agree to disagree I'm afraid. There were three high profile cases last year were women were freed after wrongly being accused of killing their children. Yes their freedom could be restored, but not their democratic right to vote in any elections they happened to have missed, were the sad case of cot deaths was interpreted as infanticide by a now struck off doctor.

Like I posted earlier, the best criminals are those outside the prison system. Each of whom has at present have the right to vote.

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yes ,look how long Shipman was undetected ,,,how many times did he vote?

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So whilst incarcerated prisoners should have no access to books, education etc?


Someone who has committed crimes to fund a drug habit, should spend their sentence without perhaps learning a skill or a trade, in the hope that they could perhaps be reintergrated into society on their release, rather than being released to carry on as they were before?

'Woolly liberal':D

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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!

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You cant give prisoners all the rights they're entitled to on the outside, otherwise whats the point in them being in their? esp on the grounds of they might later be found innocent. You could also argue that people who have emmigrated should still have the right to vote incase they decide to move back

Re: Prisoners to get the vote
 

According to today's Observer, and taken from recently published Government figures-

Reoffending costs society at least £11bn a year.

Former prisoners commit one in five of every crime.

Three out of every five prisoners reconvicted within two years of being released from prison.



Clearly something's not working at the moment, and yes I do think you've moved the goal posts, first by stating that all but 'basic rights' should be issued to prisoners, and then saying that prisoners should be allowed to educate themselves at tax payers expense, a 'right' a lot of people on the outside don't have the privilege, or are able to afford.

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'Great Britain also recently made it easier for British citizens abroad to register to vote back home. As of 1 April, British nationals living abroad can apply to register to vote by post; file a registration form with the signature of any British subject, rather than that of someone who knows them personally; and register to vote at any time of year under a so-called rolling electoral register system. Under previous law, British citizens wishing to apply for registration as overseas electors also had to have been registered at a UK address within 20 years before their application; that requirement has now been reduced to 15 years.'


All the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to the sun can still cast their vote here if they so wish.

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I think thats wrong too. Electoral roll seems to be a complete sham. my ex in rawtenstall claimed she split with her ex before moving into the house she's in now with just the kids, yet he's on the roll. I've never got an explanation other than he helped her get the house, I don't see what thats got to do with being on an electoral roll for voting and to me means he should be living there. It seems a very lax system, that allows that.

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Our local prison, which is the catergory 1 Whitemore, has had a wind turbine built beside it. Apparently, the blades reflect sunlight into the cells and keeps them awake. The turbine is turned off each night, till mid-day next day, so as not to upset them.

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Do they not have curtains?

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What I would like to know is, what are they still doing in bed?............

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Good point. They should turn it back on at 6am.

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And why turn it off at night when there is no sun?

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So it's off when the darlings decide to wake I guess