The ECHR doesn’t do itself any favour with issues like prisoner voting, and it is very disappointing to those of us keen to promote Britain Europe that such a relatively minor yet emotive issue can give the opportunity for runaway euro-phobic headlines in the Express, Mail and elsewhere.
What is more disappointing, however, is that some labourites, see mileage in promoting a pro a voting rights view; perhaps I am being narrow-minded, a bad liberal, and shooting down open debate, in which case sorry, but really, whilst it is a perfectly honourable view that participation in society should form part of rehabilitation, this is the definition of an issue where we should find a sensible consensus to comply with the law without being at odds with the feeling of natural justice that most people share, and move on to more important matters.
The Jack Straw motion, noting the judgement and the fact the matter has now been debated by the supreme legislature, as had been noted to the contrary in the judgement, is the most sensible way forward in the mean time; medium-term the model used elsewhere of a ‘loss of civic rights’ sentence added to serious offences, or base it on sentence / tariff, would seem sensible. Denis MacShane's piece linked below is closer to my thinking and raised some interesting wider points.
The idea of being forced to give prisoners additional rights, however worthy the arguments, and most especially any idea of paying compensation, is wholly at odds with most people’s sense of fairness, and we really can’t risk any chance of being seen to disagree with that. Instead of wasting ink on this, lets instead talk about –
1 – The ECHR, tell people what it is, what it has achieved, what involvement Britain had in it’s creation and has today, and what we want to see change to make it more efficient.
2 – Why our prison population is so high, and why many people found guilty of relatively minor offences, more than capable of voting, are incarcerated at great tax payer expense [just check out your local paper], and what we can do to get sensible about it and help to tackle the causes of crime as well.
Now that would be worthy of as many articles as care to be written.
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