Prisoners and the right to vote

Prisoners do not have a right to vote while in custody. If they are on remand they can but if sentenced to imprisonment they can't vote during the period of their incarceration.

Personally, I can't see any good reason why prisoners should be prohibited from voting. Yet this is considered to be a difficult and controversial question with strong arguments on both sides of the debate.

Where do you stand and why?


ps I'm not interested in arguments that human rights don't exist - vads

If someone is locked up then they have been judge to have done something worthy of removing them from society. I have no issue with them not being able to vote and it makes some sense really. Its also not something im particularly worried about though.

Interesting topic.

Thanks not true is it?

It's only if they're serving a sentence that's longer than 3 years, innit?

yep only those serving over 3 years

www.elections.org.nz/maori/ntkm-democracy/who-can-vote.html

interesting topic - I think the 3 years thang we have currently is a good fence sitter

I agree that on the whole they should be able to have their say in the democratic process - they aren't completely removed from society and the democratic process can have quite long timeframes so they could be voting to shape society once they have served their sentence.

I guess the one argument for it is the punitive/deterrent effect? It's effectively another part of the punishment.

well the obvious argument is that they've rescinded their side of the social contract. would this, then, not make the social contract void?

Yeah New Zealand has the 3 year limit, I'm not so sure what the limit in UK is. But I'm more concerned about the principle behind the rule.

The punishment argument has been put forward as a justification though that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Loss of liberty is punishment enough, surely? I also don't really see how losing the right to vote satisfies any of the punishment justifications (retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, just deserts, etc). So I don't really think punishment operates as a very strong argument in support. And if you take the view that the right to vote is THE most fundamental human right (which some theorists do) then suspending it requires strong justification.

Peat, your social contract point is interesting. But it means that losing the right to vote is part of punishment for violation and you run into the same problems that the punishment argument runs into.

I'm not going to go campaigning for prisoners' right to vote, but I think the issue is interesting.

historically, the punishment of imprisonment was only meant to deprive a person of their liberty

its not meant to involve the stripping of all other rights as punishment for "breaking the social contract"

I can't see why prisoners should be deprived of the right to vote, in principle

I could argue that breaking the social contract (if not voiding it completely) creates a case for damages so that for instance the greater the wrong the greater the damages in which case , for a serious wrong, loss of liberty is not enough..
Of course losing the vote can satisfy those punishment justifications you listed. Its a retribution and a deterrence and the offer of its return is an incentive to rehabilitate.

I don't have any problem with prisoners not being able to vote. When you commit a crime, it isn't an individual act against one person or persons only. A criminal act is also an act against civil society. The criminal has set him or herself against the mores of society, and in doing so have placed themselves outside of society. Once upon a time the local sheriff or head honcho might simply have declared you literally an outlaw - one who could be killed with impunity. For lesser offenses, you must attone for your crimes before being re-admitted to civil society. Hence, to me, it makes sense that you lose some of the rights to participate in civil society whilst you are punished to extent seen fit.

Besides that, a common sense objection occurs to me as well. Would, for example, John Key really be grateful to know the Antoine Dixon voted for him last election? Would the Maori Party or Labour or the Greens be happy to discover they won the Paremoremo booth in the general election? Would the victim of a terrible rape be impressed to discover her attacker voted for the same party as her? The general public would rightly find it abhorrent that people convicted of the most terrible crimes could endorse candidates and boast about who they voted for.

How about prisoners and the right to work? Stevenson's just laid off 100 staff because Paremoremo was using slave, sorry, prison labour to do the same job at a much lower rate. Given they pay prisoners 20cents an hour that's hardly surprising...

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/2487438

nah, Stevensons are being clever

sack ya workforce and tender for one of these

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4848674a11.html

free slaves all round

Oh and of course once you've got a nice feedback loop of private prison corporations funding the likes of Garth McVicar to lobby for an increase in their slave labour work force, the next logical step is to get the judicary involved...

And lo! So it came to pass.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142654/

"...In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers..."

stevensons has been going bust for all sorts of reasons

remember the chinese blue stone that lines our golden mile?

Loss of liberty might not be enough for egregious breaches of the social contract, but how does losing the right to vote remedy that? So they keep their freedom of expression, freedom of thought, religion and conscience, right to life and bodily security, right to privacy even but somehow taking away the right to vote might be their just deserts? I don’t buy it. Seems to me the social contract theory doesn’t explain why we take away their right to vote as opposed to say their right to fish.

Maybe it's just a practical solution to save time, money and risk of having prisoners vote.

..Or that the person has had their freedom taken away (temporarily) because of whatever and so because they can't contribute to things required of 'free' people - like be drafted for military service, do jury duty etc - they probably should lose right to vote too.

Well obviously they lose some of their rights, the right to liberty being first and foremost. Other rights are heavily qualified in order to enable the serving of the sentence (association, privacy, expression, etc). But WHY suspend the right to vote? To take away a right, even temporarily, requires justification. Such is necessitated by a free and democratic society. The removal from society – which is what I think you are relying on as justification - is really an inadequate argument. They are not ‘removed’. They are still in society, that part of society which exists between the walls of the prison in which they are kept. They are still people, they are still citizens.

As for your common sense objection, there is nothing to stop a prisoner from boasting that if he could vote he would vote for Key or Clark or the Green Party. There is also nothing to stop a prisoner from publicly opposing a particular party or particular policies. They are also able to protest their innocence which incidentally might be much more offensive to their victims than to know what their political affiliations are. All in all, abhorrence of the ever-sensitive middle NZ is rarely a justification for anything, let alone a removal of a fundamental human right.

Yeah... how is voting a fundamental human right? You have to qualify for it by being 18, a permanent resident or citizen, not someone in prison for an indictable offence etc etc.

Doesn't sound like as if voting is akin to the right to live.

it's a fundamental right protected by a stream of international instruments and recognized as so by a stream of international instruments. along with the right to life and the rest.

fundamental does not mean absolute of course. very few right are absolute. right to vote is not one of them.

If prisoners had the vote, they could, hypothetically, vote their way out of prison.

Are jokes allowed in CA?

Well why dont we let under 18 year olds vote? The more i think about the less i see justification for them to vote.

We dont let those under 18 vote, i presume because they arent judged to be qualified. What qualifies someone sent to prison for more than three years over someone 17 and 364/365th years old at the cut off?

Youre never going to get a perfect system because you cant vote in fractions.

I'd hope it was because they haven't contributed to the country yet (generally) and therefore shouldn't have a say in running it.

People who have been jailed for x amount of time have squandered their right to vote by showing they don't want to be part of the law abiding majority of society - breaking the social/moral/legal code we, as a group, have decided is our set of rules.

This is also why I think migrants should have to wait for e.g. five-plus years of being taxpayers before they can vote... Before then simply haven't contributed enough to warrant giving them such a powerful voice.

Fundamental means an essential part of. If you take away something fundamental, the thing is no longer that thing anymore. So yes, it is absolute.

don't bore me with semantics vadinho. when in human rights discourse rights are described as 'fundamental' that is a reference to a core-group of political and civil rights (life, liberty, expression, suffrage, etc). when a right is described as 'absolute' it means that no derogation is allowed from it in any circumstances. we have many fundamental rights. only a few are absolute.

Under 18 year olds can't vote because we make assumptions (however wrongly) about their capacity to vote. Prisoners on the other hand can't vote, not because they are not regarded as having the capacity to do so, but for some other reason (punishment seems to be the prevalent one). So the situations are quite different.

I'm not after a perfect system bob, I just want to see a solid justification for suspending a fundamental human right in case of prisoners.

Really don't see how this justifies anything beyond an interference with the right to liberty...

well, not really that different. An under 18yr old can't vote because they lack foresight / intellectual capacity or whatever you want to call it to be able to make an informed decision.

A criminal is really not so different, the fact that they are removed from society means that the majority of those issues that affect NZers on a day to day basis don't really affect them. Nothing to do with punishment here, it's simply because they are are far too removed from society to be able to make any kind of informed decision, thereby placing them in a similar situation to the 16yr old who simply doesn't have a clue.

Problem virgo is that has never been put forward as a rationale and there's good reason for it - it's not a very good rationale at all.

The idea that a prisoner is unaffected by the Government that does or does not get elected is ludicrous. With criminal justice and penal reform being at the forefront of party politics, it's clear that prisoners do have an interest in the outcome of an election. Even aside from that more specific interest, a prisoner clearly has an interest in how the society is shaped - politically - on the 'outside' given that many prisoners have family living on the outside and given that at not so distant future they too will be part of the outside again. So this idea that they are not really affected by issues while in prison is simply false.

Nor can you suggest that a prisoner can't make an informed decision - they most certainly can, they have access to information from newspapers and through television, they could be given access to campaign material should they require it, I don't see any reason why a prisoner is in any different position to the rest of us in that regard.

Depends if you view jail as merely an interference to liberty... which I don't. I see it more as a 'pausing' of the right to be a normal, free person - the benefits of which include being able to go where you want, associate with who you want, as well as the obligations that come with it - the chance of being asked to contribute to society through military drafts, jury duty, paying taxes etc.

It doesn't make sense to be able to vote if you can't contribute. Arguing prisoners are contributing to society somehow is a big ask but I'm sure there a legal expert somewhere who can argue they are.

prisoners keep those looking after them employed (amongst other things) - a great benefit to society that is.... so much so private firms want in on the action

yeap, I don't necessarily agree with private prisons but im willing to try it as a long term (10 years) experiment on a limited scale.

I doubt there would be a saving enough to warrant the extra for a return for the private firm. Maybe there is though.

I presume a private firm will need to pay people too so the benefit to society through staff is dubious - even more so if you consider that the govt would be able to spend any savings on other things or reduce taxes, both of benefit to society.

Maybe they could put the savings towards victim reparation (yeah right)

And factor in private prisons wont have much incentive to rehabilitate people as well as they can as the best business, in theory, for them will come from released people who go on to re-offend.

(as heard on Boston Legal episode last week)

It's pretty big assumption to say that just because a prisoner has a family outside of prison, that they'll be taking that family's needs into consideration when voting. Secondly, having access to information about an issue is not the same as being affected by an issue. If I'm in prison my food, healthcare and accommodation are paid for by the tax payer, I am guaranteed these things as a human right whilst I am in prison. Unlike people outside prison, I don't have to work for my food or shelter, or in the case of those financially strained, worry about how much the government will give me while I'm on the dole.

Therefore people outside prison are more in touch with how a government's policies actually affect them in their day to day lives, a prisoner won't feel these effects, they will ALWAYS have food, they will ALWAYS have shelter, and if they are sick they will ALWAYS get medical attention, regardless of what government is elected, because these things have been guaranteed to them whilst they are in prison. Why on earth would they be allowed to vote on matters that don't concern them?