Prisoners as Citizens in a Democracy

Abstract

Abstract: This article looks at voting rights for sentenced prisoners in the UK. A number of approaches are adopted by governments of the Council of Europe and the UK is one of 13 member states which operate a blanket ban on prisoners voting. Following a European Court of Human Rights judgment in 2006, the UK is now obliged to review this policy which has been held to breach an individual's right to contribute to free elections. The options open to the UK are to retain prisoner disenfranchisement or enfranchise certain serving prisoners based on criteria such as sentence length and offence seriousness.