Democracy diminished

The failure of the United Kingdom, despite warnings from the Council of Europe, to comply with the 2004 ruling of the European Court of Human Rights that all prisoners must be allowed to vote illustrates the extent to which medieval notions of punishment colour the understanding of the canons of modern rule of law even in advanced democracies. The Court is the judicial arm of the Council of Europe, which comprises 47 states. Under any system of liberal constitutional government that enshrines universal adult suffrage, the deprivation of the basic democratic right of the vote to anybody undermines his or her fundamental identity as a citizen of a nation-state. As such, a denial of the right to felons is tantamount to a double penalty, considering that incarceration fulfils the punitive objective of curtailing their liberty. Disenfranchisement runs counter to the spirit of proportionality, deterrence, and reformation — values that are increasingly seen as underpinning the purpose of punitive measures and intended to undercut the harshness and cruelty historically associated with the administration of criminal justice. The Council's warnings to the British government to let prisoners vote in the 2010 general election or be in breach of their human rights came on the back of a campaign by liberal democrats and activist groups to enfranchise the country's 70,300 convicted prisoners. The court had held that a prisoner's right to vote — in addition to his or her rights to marriage, practise religion, freedom of expression and correspondence, access to legal remedy, and protection against torture — fell outside the purview of the deprivation of liberty sanctioned under a conviction.

The United States presents a unique case of barring an estimated five million convicted felons from voting. American states have different laws relating to prisoner voting rights. While several of them permanently disenfranchise felony convicts, a couple of states allow prisoners serving a sentence to vote. Equally bizarre is the Indian case where contesting and often winning elections from within prison walls is not uncommon, although exercising the franchise is another matter. India needs to follow the European, not the U.S., example in this respect. To prevent prisoners serving a sentence from fulfilling a basic democratic duty is indeed to deny them their human rights.