No Vote for Prisoners in the United Kingdom

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United Kingdom is one of the countries of European Union which bans voting among convicted prisoners (Black, Dhami, and Easter 2012, 44). According to ICPS (2013), total population of prisoners in UK,including Scotland and Northern Ireland equals to 94,136. Allowing inmates to take a part in elections became a serious political issue aftr the decision of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the "Hirst vs UK" case, which ruled that the rights of convicted were violated by total prohibition on voting in the elections undr the ECHR. However, parliament of the country has different views - most of th goverment's representatives do not agree with court's ruling. There are still a lot of discussions, relating to this question and no common solution was found (Ramsay 2013, 421). The question of disfranchisement has many controvrsial opinions and there are supporters on the both sides of the issue, each having considerable arguments to maintain their visions. Disputing both negative and positive sides, this paper displays that denounced inmates should not be allowed to participate in elections.

Even though prisoners are isolated from the society, they remain human yet and retain their basic human rights. As one would know choice is one of the fundamental rights of a human being. Also prisoners still remain citizens, so, according to the Article 25 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights: "citizens have the right to vote" (Black, Dhami and Easter, 2012, 43). Sometimes situation in country, which could occur after voting, may seriously influence on whole country, including prisoners themselves, so, even if they are only a little part of nation, they should have a right to take a part in elections. Nevertheless, kee...

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...ll, on account of this points which were listed above it is strongly recommended for Britain to continue not allowing prisoners a right to vot in elections.

Works Cited

Black, Tim, Susan Easter. 2012. "Should Prisoners Be Allowed to Vote" Criminal Justice Matters 90(1): 43-44
Blais, Andre, Louis Massicotte and Antoine Yoshinaka. 2001. "Deciding who has the right to vote: a comparative analysis of election laws." Electoral Studies 20(1):41-62
International Center for Prison Studies. 2013. "Entire world - Prison Population Rates per 100,000 of the national population." Last modified September 27, 2013.
Lardy, Heather.2004."Is there a right to vote." Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 24(2):303-321
Ramsay, Peter. 2013. "Voters should not be in prison! The rights of prisoners in a democracy."Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16(3): 421-438

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