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Prisoner Voting and Penal Populism in the UK

By Jonathan Simor

Last fall Justice Minister Ken Clarke issued a green paper [read the consultation paper here] on penal policy signaling a course correction from the mass incarceration policies promoted by New Labour during its 13 years in power (and indeed for the last two years of the Tory government which proceeded). Better use of community corrections for less serious crimes, reconsideration of mandatory minimums on life sentences, and restorative justice across the range of cases were all to be considered, with the goal of avoiding the continued growth of incarceration in England Wales. So far these signs have not been reversed. But the potential limits of the coalitions' experiment with reversing the larger constellation of penal populism, from which mass incarceration is a predictable result, are now on display as the government confronts a renewed call by the European Court of Human Rights to address a five year old mandate, utterly ignored by the previous government, to give most British prisoners the ability to vote in elections for parliamentary bodies (regional, national, or European), or face paying compensation damages to all otherwise eligible prisoners beginning with the upcoming regional elections (for the Scots parliament and the Welsh Assembly) [read the Guardian's coverage of the Novemeber decision]...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on February 07, 2011 (boomark / email).