Should Prisoners Have The Right To Vote?

A convicted murderer has lost a legal battle to be given the right to vote in elections while serving a prison term. Peter Chester was jailed in 1977 for raping and strangling his niece in Blackpool and is deemed too dangerous to be allowed out of jail on licence. Lawyers for Chester had argued the ban breached the inmate's human rights.

But Mr Justice Burton threw out the claim, saying Chester's application, funded through the Legal Aid Scheme, had been "wholly inappropriate" and offensive. Dismissing Chester's argument on all grounds, the judge said the case would have cost the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds and amounted to an "impermissible" attempt to force the courts to interfere with Parliament.

However, Parliament, which enacts British Law, is now prevented from barring those who break the law from taking part in the electoral process. Ministers have been forced to lift the ban on inmates voting to comply with a European court ruling. The government's hand has been forced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which ruled in 2004 that the 140-year-old British law was “unlawful”. The move is a clear example of the federalist power of an increasingly powerful European Union, and the diminishing sovereignty of its member states.

A prison sentenced is passed when an individual has committed a crime, or if you prefer, broken a fundamental plank of the social contract that exists between society and the state. The rights and privileges that are earned under that contract are deemed to be in breech and as such, a very obvious loss of liberty is but one of the many consequences.

However, in an age of over liberal human rights campaigning, decision making has moved away from the victim in terms of justice being seen to be done, and more to the perpetrator where their human rights are perceived to be in need of some form of protection, despite the fact that they have been found guilty of not acknowledging the human rights of their victims in the perpetration of their crimes.

The right to vote, to take part in the decision making process that governs the social contract is central to the freedoms enjoyed in a democracy. To break this contract, to commit a crime, means it is the criminal that has decided to risk those freedoms by his actions. The right to vote is quite legitimately removed from those in prison as a justifiable consequence of their own actions. If voting is a right in a democracy, then non-criminal behaviour is the responsibility required from an individual to be able to exercise that right.