Prisoner voting rights are undemocratic

It was unlikely that the Coalition could have played for any more time before lifting the ban on prisoner voting.  That was the tactic played by the previous Government, but now it seems the will of Strasbourg will prevail.  But the policy is wildly out of step with public opinion, hard to justify and difficult to administer – it is also another example of how our own Parliament and domestic courts have been undermined.  
 
The public are opposed – usually on principle – to granting additional privileges to serving prisoners, especially when they have done little or nothing to earn it.  They are against voting rights in particular on the grounds that it is one of the rights that lawbreakers give up by virtue of their crime. Penal reformers on the other hand have pursued this policy largely because it fits their conception of what a rehabilitation agenda should encompass.