Voting By Convicted Prisoners

Through different legal and criminological angles and perspectives, this book addresses the controversial question of whether prisoners should have the right to vote, as well as the optimal modalities for such a vote. By adopting a comparative approach to explore the legal systems of very different jurisdictions, such as the former Eastern Bloc, England, Ireland, the USA and France, the book reveals a recent trend in opening up the right to vote. It also looks at the recommendations of international and European institutions which, while relatively cautious, nevertheless support such progress. Examining the issue from a criminological viewpoint, the book investigates the role that prisoners’ votes could play in the social integration of these individuals into the community through political inclusion as citizens. Offering legal, theoretical and empirical bases, it blends a variety of perspectives to help readers establish an understanding of how prisoners' voting could contribute to improving their attachment to society and its values. Concise and direct, Prisoners' Vote will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of law, criminology, sociology, criminal justice, and political science. It should also appeal to practitioners working in the criminal justice system and policy makers reflecting on whether and how, to open the right to vote to prisoners.

"Should prisoners be allowed to vote?" This book is the first comprehensive evaluation of arguments on both sides of the debate.The author, Adam Godwin, gained a masters degree investigating this divisive political issue.This book examines the morality and usefulness of removing the voting rights of convicted prisoners in the U.K. It examines the arguments used to defend disenfranchisement and examines whether or not the practice is coherent with the traditional goals of our criminal justice system. It is centred around the British system, though arguments apply to any system of prisoner disenfranchisement.

This short report sets out a summary of evidence taken by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee looking into the issue of voting by convicted prisioners, in advance of the debate taking place on 10 February 2011. Evidence was taken from legal experts, including the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. The main purpose is to gather expert evidence on how the United Kingdom law in this area relates to the European Convention on Human Rights as interpreted through the binding judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.

The ruling that convicted prisoners have the right to vote has put the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg at loggerheads with the UK Parliament. This was reinforced in 2011 when backbenchers of all parties rejected enfranchising prisoners in a free vote. In this forensic examination, Dominic Raab, MP for Esher and Walton, explains how the infamous Hirst ruling undermines the express terms of the Convention agreed in 1950. Contracting states agreed that holding free elections was a human right, but reserved for nation states the right to decide who was eligible to vote. Raab argues that the Strasbourg Court is acting beyond its legitimate powers of interpretation, and proposed that the UK Supreme Court be enabled to overrule Strasbourg.

"Mr. Manza and Mr. Uggen... wade into one of the most contested empirical debates in political science: How many (if any) recent American elections would have gone differently if all former felons had been allowed to vote?"--The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, who understand the vastness of the jailers' reach, follow the story out of the cell and into the voting booth. Locked Out examines how the disenfranchisement of felons shapes American democracyhardly a hypothetical matter in an age of split electorates and hanging chads.... Exacting and fair, their work should persuade even those who come to the subject skeptically that an injustice is at hand.The New York Review of Books. 5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adultsare denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--for election outcomes, for the reintegration of former offenders back into their communities, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of “get tough on crime” attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and ’90s, a range of strategies, from “three strikes” and “a war on drugs,” to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrong-doers, but on their families and the communities they come from. This book looks at the consequences of these policies twenty years later.