Votes for prisoners

[glassnahalf]

Surely not. If they try and force this through then it is a BIG mistake.

[supermik]

Why?

[Peppino Impastato]

2 hours ago, Stinky Bone said:

During their term of imprisonment, convicts should not have the right to vote.  The jury/sheriff decided they were guilty of an offence and as such they lost their right to be part of a civilised society.  

Once they are released they should be able to register to vote.  

 

Unless they are paedos, they should hang.

No they didn't they lost their liberty.  That's punishment enough.  Voting is an entirely separate issue.

[AyrExile]

Would certainly help the Yes vote get closer to the line if this were to happen 

[101]

Brilliant idea, prisons are not fit for purpose because prisoners have no say in what they are like. As long as prisoners have their liberty restricted and are being rehabilitated then anything to help that should be endorsed by all - voting it key to a civilized democracy.

You can bet that no prisoner would vote of private incarceration where companies profit from people being locked up.

We would also need to look at those deemed mentally ill (especially psychosis), clearly, people who commit murder or rape are not of sound mind but are deemed responsible enough to be accountable for their actions. 

We don't kill prisoners so giving them the vote is the next logical step of moving out prison systems into the 21st Century.

[lichtgilphead]

45 minutes ago, AyrExile said:

Would certainly help the Yes vote get closer to the line if this were to happen 

Do you have any evidence for this statement, or is it just your unsupported opinion?

Any quick google search will find that Alex Salmond refused to give prisoners the vote in the 2014 referendum, even though the UK's referendum legislation would have allowed him to extend the franchise to inmates. 

Why would he have not taken this advantage if it existed

(Incidentaly, I thought he was wrong at the time, and remain of the same opinion now)

[The Chlamydia Kid]

Brilliant idea, prisons are not fit for purpose because prisoners have no say in what they are like. As long as prisoners have their liberty restricted and are being rehabilitated then anything to help that should be endorsed by all - voting it key to a civilized democracy.
You can bet that no prisoner would vote of private incarceration where companies profit from people being locked up.
We would also need to look at those deemed mentally ill (especially psychosis), clearly, people who commit murder or rape are not of sound mind but are deemed responsible enough to be accountable for their actions. 
We don't kill prisoners so giving them the vote is the next logical step of moving out prison systems into the 21st Century.

You quite clearly have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

[The OP]

It's gesture politics - prisoners number about 8,000 generally so it'll make f**k all difference to anything in reality. Imagine half of them wouldn't be arsed/would be too off their face to bother too.  

I suppose it shows your government is accountable if you allow the people you lock up to remove you from office so I'd have no issue with them bringing it in.

[DA Baracus]

Of course prisoners should have the right to vote. Why shouldn't they?! Especially for those with shorter sentences as they'll be living in society once again after they're released

[MEADOWXI]

13 hours ago, The OP said:

It's gesture politics - prisoners number about 8,000 generally so it'll make f**k all difference to anything in reality. Imagine half of them wouldn't be arsed/would be too off their face to bother too.  

I suppose it shows your government is accountable if you allow the people you lock up to remove you from office so I'd have no issue with them bringing it in.

Do they vote in their home constituency, where 8,000 spread over the country would be minimal, or on block where they are incarcerated?

A few hundred convicts in the constituencies of Barlinnie, Peterhead or Kilmarnock (scrub Kilmarnock, probably improve the quality of the constituents) could make a differernce especially as they are a group with a special self interest that could be targetted.

[The OP]

41 minutes ago, MEADOWXI said:

Do they vote in their home constituency, where 8,000 spread over the country would be minimal, or on block where they are incarcerated?

A few hundred convicts in the constituencies of Barlinnie, Peterhead or Kilmarnock (scrub Kilmarnock, probably improve the quality of the constituents) could make a differernce especially as they are a group with a special self interest that could be targetted.

Dunno, but Barlinnie is in Glasgow North East which has an electorate of about 60,000 and a voter turnout of about 35,000 and Glasgow Provan which has an electorate of about 55,000 and a voter turnout of about 24,000.  Barlinnie  houses about 1,000 prisoners. 

If the prisoners for some reason decided to all vote for the same party despite their differing crimes, interests, sentences, backgrounds, levels of education etc then a special interest party would finish a distant fourth behind the Conservatives but above the Lib Dems. If the SNP or Labour specifically courted the votes of prisoners then the one MP/MSP gained would probably be an overall disaster for PR. 

I think it'd be more likely they'd do it according to ordinary domicile but either way it's clearly not going to matter at all. 

Edit - Peterhead doesn't exist anymore but was much smaller.  The replacement has about 500 prisoners, including some young offenders. 

[MEADOWXI]

5 minutes ago, The OP said:

Dunno, but Barlinnie is in Glasgow North East which has an electorate of about 60,000 and a voter turnout of about 35,000 and Glasgow Provan which has an electorate of about 55,000 and a voter turnout of about 24,000.  Barlinnie  houses about 1,000 prisoners. 

If the prisoners for some reason decided to all vote for the same party despite their differing crimes, interests, sentences, backgrounds, levels of education etc then a special interest party would finish a distant fourth behind the Conservatives but above the Lib Dems. If the SNP or Labour specifically courted the votes of prisoners then the one MP/MSP gained would probably be an overall disaster for PR. 

I think it'd be more likely they'd do it according to ordinary domicile but either way it's clearly not going to matter at all. 

Edit - Peterhead doesn't exist anymore but was much smaller. 

I apologise for you taking my answer 100% seriously, and acknowledge that the prison in Peterhead is actually call HMP Grampian.

[The OP]

3 minutes ago, MEADOWXI said:

I apologise for you taking my answer 100% seriously, and acknowledge that the prison in Peterhead is actually call HMP Grampian.

Gotta be honest, other than briefly saying Kilmarnock is a shitehole I see nothing to suggest your answer wasn't 100% serious. Needs more smiley faces. 

[strichener]

1 hour ago, The OP said:

Dunno, but Barlinnie is in Glasgow North East which has an electorate of about 60,000 and a voter turnout of about 35,000 and Glasgow Provan which has an electorate of about 55,000 and a voter turnout of about 24,000.  Barlinnie  houses about 1,000 prisoners. 

If the prisoners for some reason decided to all vote for the same party despite their differing crimes, interests, sentences, backgrounds, levels of education etc then a special interest party would finish a distant fourth behind the Conservatives but above the Lib Dems. If the SNP or Labour specifically courted the votes of prisoners then the one MP/MSP gained would probably be an overall disaster for PR. 

I think it'd be more likely they'd do it according to ordinary domicile but either way it's clearly not going to matter at all. 

Edit - Peterhead doesn't exist anymore but was much smaller.  The replacement has about 500 prisoners, including some young offenders. 

 

1 hour ago, MEADOWXI said:

I apologise for you taking my answer 100% seriously, and acknowledge that the prison in Peterhead is actually call HMP Grampian.

And HMP Grampian does not house any young offenders.  The YOI has been closed since a month after it opened after the little shits decided to riot.

[The OP]

In any event, the 'Free the Paedos' party is unlikely to make much headway with 500 supporters in Banff and Buchan. 

[Brother Blades]

I can’t think of one prisoner I would vote for in the UK, stupid campaign slogan IMO.

[strichener]

59 minutes ago, The OP said:

In any event, the 'Free the Paedos' party is unlikely to make much headway with 500 supporters in Banff and Buchan. 

You are 5 years too late.  In fact the sex offenders are more likely to be in fife now.

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

3 hours ago, The OP said:

In any event, the 'Free the Paedos' party is unlikely to make much headway with 500 supporters in Banff and Buchan. 

It seems a very simple solution to stop a block Barlinnie vote is to make prisoners eligible to vote at the address of their next of kin rather than in the prison's constituency.

In cases with no next of kin, then the address given in court. And if no address was given then they can vote in the prison constituency.

 

[Jacksgranda]

2 hours ago, strichener said:

You are 5 years too late.  In fact the sex offenders are more likely to be in fife now.

Weren't they always?

[The OP]

8 minutes ago, Jim McLean's Ghost said:

It seems a very simple solution to stop a block Barlinnie vote is to make prisoners eligible to vote at the address of their next of kin rather than in the prison's constituency.

In cases with no next of kin, then the address given in court. And if no address was given then they can vote in the prison constituency.

 

Yeah I said I thought it would go by ordinary domicile but in either event it wouldn’t really matter.

I suppose the overriding point is it wouldn’t make a difference unless the state* were locking up hundreds of thousands of people and if they were locking up hundreds of thousands of people the government is tyrannical and should be removed.

*Everything I say refers to the Scottish state, if anyone is about to quote prison populations from a much larger jurisdiction to me.