Right to vote to detainees, yes or not?

by Ivano Abbadessa - 2013.06.27

Should prisoners be allowed to vote? This is the question that has been discussed in the UK in recent weeks. Two detainees, George McGeoch and Peter Chester, have turned the spotlight on the issue by presenting a petition to judges at the Supreme Court, asking to be re-enrolled on the electoral register.



In 2006 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) criticised the UK's electoral law, which automatically prohibits inmates from voting during their time in prison.



In Europe, it is common to deny prisoners their voting rights, although this is done in a variety of ways through various legal structures. The ECHR judges in Strasbourg have repeatedly spoken out against an automatic loss of voting rights, based on an interpretation of the right to free elections, described in article 3 of the first protocol of the ECHR. The voting rights of prisoners in the 43 member states of the Council of Europe were recently compared in a report, which categorised the countries into three groups.



The first group included the following 19 countries: Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. All of which have no restrictions on prisoners' voting rights.



In contrast, a group of seven countries automatically deprives all prisoners sentenced to detention of the right to vote: Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Russia and, of course, the United Kingdom.



The remaining 16 states have adopted an intermediate approach: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia and Turkey. In these countries, voting rights depend on the type of crime committed and/or the duration of the prison term.



In Italy, legislation takes this intermediate approach. Article 28 of the Italian Criminal Code states that the detainee may be deprived “of the right to vote or to stand in any election and all other political rights.”



The situation is complex as well as varied. The ECHR has given a clear indication on the direction to take, the right to vote being the most visible manifestation of participation in public life and at the same time forming a basis for the process of prisoner's rehabilitation and his or her personal development.

Published in Prisons