Why shouldn’t prisoners vote?

UK MPs have recently supported a motion which defies an EU ruling that prisoners should retain the right to vote. No doubt pragmatism is at play, as politicians see an easy way to boost their ‘tough on crime’ credentials, and take a supposedly principled stand against Strasbourg. As a more ordinary kind of person, I wonder why on earth prisoners shouldn’t vote.

Thom Brooks has recently applied some philosophical thinking to this question. I agree with his approach, and share his doubts about the possibility of finding a solid argument for denying prisoners the vote. Let’s look at some of the arguments people make against giving prisoners the right to vote. I searched this Daily Mail editorial for a coherent argument against giving prisoners the vote. The only thing I could find was this:

Since 1870, prisoners have quite rightly been stripped of their right to take part in the democratic process in recognition of the gravity of their crimes against society.

I won’t bother with the empty ‘quite rightly’ and ‘since 1870’ which don’t even come close to standing as premises. Instead, I will paraphrase the main arguments people could make against enfranchising prisoners:

1. Prisoners have done bad things and should be punished
2. Prisoners are bad people and would vote for bad politicians
3. Prisoners have broken their contract with society, so should have no say in running it

Staring with 1., I would start by asking whether denying people the right to vote actually makes sense as a punishment. It is unlikely to make hard-bitten criminals think twice, especially when compared to the much graver punishment of being locked up! Further, as Thom Brooks points out, plenty of people are guilty of minor crimes (eg traffic offences) which go undetected or at least unsentenced, and we don’t feel driven to disenfranchise people in such situations, even temporarily. Even if we modify this claim, and suggest disenfranchisement is a punishment fit for more serious criminals, problems remain. We’re not willing to say that disenfranchisement is a serious enough punishment on its own. And when other punishments (eg incarceration) are introduced, losing the vote seems rather trivial.  Turns out that the Daily Mail editorial is accompanied by a cartoon which airs this objection:

Onto 2. You don’t need to be an election expert to realise that the votes of prisoners (especially if cast in their home constituencies) would have hardly any effect on election results. The numbers involved are just too small. And if politicians did begin to court the ‘jailhouse vote’, why would that be such a problem? It doesn’t follow that people who are serving prison sentences are all of one political stripe (unless we are in some kind of oppressive regime, where Lib Dems are hunted down and interned). There are large numbers of prisoners who eventually return to society, including a few politicians, such as Jonathan Aitken. It seems reasonable enough for politicians to take an interest in the concerns of prisoners.

Now point 3. It’s true that a prison sentence could be thought of as a temporary exile from society, in the sense that breaking the law has the consequence of losing one’s liberty. But apart from those sentenced to life imprisonment, or a secure hospital, is it not obvious that our criminal justice system aims at returning reformed offenders to society? In serving a sentence of under a year, a prisoner could easily end up missing an election and subsequently having no say in those who governed her for the next term of parliament. This fate is also totally arbitrary, and would depend on how slowly the wheels of justice turned. A long-running case or slow police investigation might leave serious criminals with the vote, but deny it to those guilty of much lesser offences.

Perhaps a more cynical argument, unvoiced so far, is what one could call the ‘Bobby Sands problem’. Bobby Sands was a Republican hunger striker who was elected as an MP while interned and on hunger strike. Putting aside his particular political agenda for the moment, one can imagine why a government would not be keen on a prisoner attracting public support while serving time. In my view, lots of conflicts (including that in Northern Ireland) actually give evidence in favour of the inclusion of prisoners in the political process. Giving them the cold shoulder often means ceasefires cannot be established, and makes it difficult for more moderate politicians to reintegrate former combatants into peaceful processes. But I don’t think the Bobby Sands type case has any bearing on withholding the vote from ‘ordinary’ criminals.

It seems obvious that prisoners serving shorter sentences could benefit from retaining their right to vote and participation in politics. And I would hazard a guess that the numbers of prisoners serving longer-term sentences is small enough that they could vote away without affecting the political climate. And suppose we incarcerated as many people as countries such as the US? In that case, there would be a case for giving the large body of prisoners some kind of access to the political system. It might even prevent incidents such as Strangeways. I suspect that our politicians just don’t want to have to canvass jails.