Tuesday 22 May 2012

Votes For Prisoners?

No, of course not.

But if we returned to the situation whereby we could safely assume that almost everyone convicted deserved to be, and where there was far less crime anyway due to proper policing, then no one would be suggesting this.

We could also have proper sentencing, and a proper regime for the far fewer people who would be in prison. None of whom would be in for less than the four or five years of a Parliament despite having been convicted of the gravest violent, sexual or drug-related offences.

However, if we did not implement a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, then what would happen? What would it, or anyone else, actually do?

Labour Party policy has always been against votes for prisoners. The last Government was utterly uncompromising on the subject. Quite right, too. But the party in favour of it is now in office.

Might this be yet another issue on which Ed Miliband and Jon Cruddas could establish themselves and their party as the voice of mainstream Britain?

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