Just a couple of thoughts on the recent discussions on prisoners in the press.
Today it emerged that the government is considering a proposal to implement "US-style" 100-year (and longer) prison sentences for some serious offences such as murder. This proposal is intended to address a European Court of Human Rights ruling last year that whole-life tariffs breach the Human Rights Act. I am going to briefly address this issue, and also a related issue that has also been mentioned in the press recently - prisoner voting rights.
First, the prison sentences. The proposal by the government includes a right to sentence reviews, which I think is a vital aspect of it. While we all have differing views on whether punishment or rehabilitation should be the focus when criminals are convicted of a crime, I think we can all agree that on some level most people can change, and if they can change that they can change for the better. Presumably most criminals understand that what they did is wrong, an affront to the morals of society (and, of course, the law), and to argue otherwise (that they have no morals) is absurd. Thus, we have to believe that convicted criminals can definitely improve morally and therefore become either less dangerous to society or positive additions to society.
As a supporter of rehabilitation I think the implementation of "US-style" lengthy sentences of hundreds of years could be dangerous, but also that some criminals will never be rehabilitated to be safe for society. We need to ensure that everyone, regardless of their crime, has the ability to atone for their crime to an extent (through sentence reviews). This would protect society by keeping especially dangerous criminals behind bars and also not simply be locking them up and "throwing away the key". Life should not necessarily mean life.
As to prisoner voting rights, I feel that this follows on from my point that we must always assume that prisoners, no matter their crime, might change - maybe not enough to free them, but perhaps enough so that they may make some positive contributions to society. Voting is obviously quite a token gesture in this regard; if we gave all prisoners the vote and they all voted, then that is just ~80,000 votes which won't matter much if at all. However to go down this road is to make us all seem politically insignificant, and to deny any adult's right to democracy is almost to deny them the status as a citizen, which I argue is inhumane. Prisoners should have the right to vote (and be reminded of this fact) in order to keep some resemblance of relation between them and society; that if they act as a citizen should then they will have their rights (though, of course, within the confines of a prison).
We should believe that most prisoners can change in some way for the better, and that this is not helped by overtly taking away their democratic rights. It won't do any of us harm, and it might even do some good, if we let them keep the right to vote and the ability to in some way redeem themselves.
