Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014

Prisoners’ right to vote, denial of
Section G. Crime and punishment

This debate was made prominent by a series of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and the United States Supreme Court, which aimed to oblige governments to grant prisoners the right to vote. There are several forms that denial of voting rights can take, ranging in severity from a lifelong ban for felony commission (Kentucky and Louisiana in the USA), a ban for all prisoners (the UK, Italy) or disenfranchisement for particular crimes, as in most of the rest of Europe. An interesting side issue is about the severity of crime at which the threshold should be set, and in particular, for property crimes, how inflation has slowly made certain offences felonies ’by creep’; for example, in Massachusetts, it has been law for decades that a property crime of more than US$250 is a felony, for which you lose voting rights, but inflation has made that a much larger range of crimes.

Pros

[1] Voting is a right, but with rights come responsibilities, and one of those responsibilities is to obey the law. Once you refuse to obey the law, you lose certain rights, and voting is an obvious candidate. If you have shown a flagrant disregard for the law, you should have no say in making it; you should not be allowed to benefit from the democratic system that you have rejected.

[2] Taking away voting rights from criminals represents a strong deterrent for committing crime. The right to vote is not just practically important in terms of influencing government policy, but also symbolically important as a clear statement of social membership. No one wants to be made an outcast from society, which is what the deprivation of votes does.

[3] Rehabilitation is not the primary purpose of criminal justice. But even if it were, this policy would not primarily be about that. Rather, governments will be encouraged to pander to prisoners, making short-term promises for their benefit, such as more lenient punishments, which hurt the rest of society.

Cons

[1] Voting is an absolute right which should never be denied. The point of voting is to allow people to hold governments accountable and represent their interests, but prisoners undeniably have interests that deserve to be represented: being treated properly in prison, fair sentencing, etc. Breaking the law is not always a matter of failure of moral responsibility; many people do so because of psychological difficulties, drugs or poverty, that are not necessarily blameworthy.

[2] It is ridiculous to suggest that people considering committing crimes would care about the right to vote. They are, after all, willing to give up their rights to freedom of movement, and of association, so it hardly seems as though they are thinking through permutations for the future. Rather, they commit crimes rashly or out of necessity, and something as minor as voting rights for the one election they will likely be in prison for will not influence them.

[3] Giving prisoners the vote is an integral part of allowing them to rehabilitate and integrate fully into society. Telling prisoners that they have no say encourages them to perpetuate precisely the kind of beliefs about politics that led to them committing crimes in the first place, namely that no one listens to them. By giving them the vote, they will be encouraged to develop political opinions, which can give them a real focus in prison.

Possible motions

This House would give prisoners the vote.

This House believes that if you lose your right to freedom, you should lose your vote.

Related topics

Democracy

Social contract, existence of the

Prison v. rehabilitation