Put a cross here for penal reform

By Steve Gummer

Yesterday’s announcement that prisoners will soon be allowed to vote in England and Wales came as a surprise to many. However for those who have been watching the European Court of Human Rights it shouldn’t have been. The Strasbourg court originally heard the Hirst appeal in 2005. Prison campaign groups like the Howard League for Penal Reform warned before the last election that not including prisoners in the voting process could lead to legal issues at a later date and that is exactly what has happened.

On the surface this issue will focus upon a debate between freedoms of the individual against society’s right to punish. This debate has been had at length on radio and TV shows across the country over the past days. It is clear that no two people agree on whether voting is actually a fundamental freedom for all. Moreover, very few people can agree on what the real purpose of prison is. Personally, I believe prisoners should be allowed to vote and that prison should be rehabilitative; a function I think could be aided in some small part by fulfilling the social obligation of voting.

However, having listened to much of the coverage of the past few days I believe two much more pressing issues are actually involved – better representation for the vulnerable and a power shift within the prison system.

The first is an idea of renewed representation for some of the most vulnerable people in society; a group that MPs and councillors are now going to have to take more seriously.

When many people think of prison they think of a place of consciously ‘evil’ rapists and murderers, a picture carefully painted by the modern media. However our prison system is teeming with people with mental health difficulties and people who are incredibly vulnerable. Around 48% of prisoners ran away from home as a child; 63% of male prisoners have a hazardous drinking problem; 70% of prisoners suffer from two or more mental illnesses; and 32% of people in prison were homeless before they entered prison. Prison is frequently filled with the most vulnerable people in society.

Even more telling, a majority of people in prison have not committed the heinous acts frequently associated with someone in prison. 45% of men and 65% of women are in prison for a non-violent offence. The result is that our prisons are housing many people who require better social support, better mental health assistance and greater physical healthcare. If these people had been given this support they would be able to function in a normal way within society and would not be denied a vote.

The uncomfortable truth is that our society fails a great deal of vulnerable adults and children. We allow cycles of crime to persist and don’t solve the social causes of crime. A key stepping stone to solving these problems is achieving greater political involvement in these issues. Greater political interest in these areas is likely to follow if the vulnerable individuals in question are not just citizens in an elected official’s local area but electors.

The second point is perhaps the most significant aspect of yesterday’s announcement. Allowing prisoners to vote is a further erosion of the damaging monopoly the Prison Service has enjoyed for years, over every tenet of a prisoner’s life. When coupled with Ken Clarke’s recent decision to incorporate real paid work into the daily prison routine the pattern of devolving power becomes clear.

At the current time, the Prison Service’s word within the prison is law. Beneficial activities can be suspended and services, such as basic education, revoked. Such a system has led to poor results, prisoners locked in cells for 23 hours a day due to resource shortages, and rocketing reoffending rates.

However with both real work and prisoner voting, legal rights are beginning to trump the authority of the Prison Service. A company who employs prisoners will have a contractual right to have access to their staff for a forty hour week, so too will the Electoral Commission have a legal basis to demand a free and fair election, with all eligible electors being allowed to participate in spite of a prison’s desire to punish. Prison governors will soon have to meet these external expectations, likewise the government will have to create a manageable prison population to allow governors to do so. The result means the era of lousy excuses is over.

There is no doubt that this recent shift represents a monumental change from the status quo. Like all such changes there will be a political temptation to criticise; to call new moves soft on crime. However given the failure of the old prison model to dent reoffending statistics, this erosion of the pervasive and controlling powers of the central prison authorities should be welcomed.

When a judge sentences an individual, they deprive them of their liberty by placing them in prison; nothing more. They do not remove a person’s social responsibility to vote or their economic responsibility to work. Our society needs to recognise this reality in an effort to create less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.