Prisoner Voting and Devolution: New Dimensions to an Old Dispute

Between late 2017 and 2018 the United Kingdom and the Council of Europe called a truce over prisoner voting rights, and almost no one noticed. No bells rang out, no triumphal debate took place in Westminster. All protagonists had long since exhausted their energies or, at least, turned their attenti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Edinburgh law review 2021-09, Vol.25 (3), p.291-314
Main Author: Murray, Colin R G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Conflict
Decentralization
Jurisprudence
Politics and Law
Prisoners
Voting rights
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Summary:Between late 2017 and 2018 the United Kingdom and the Council of Europe called a truce over prisoner voting rights, and almost no one noticed. No bells rang out, no triumphal debate took place in Westminster. All protagonists had long since exhausted their energies or, at least, turned their attentions to the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. This article evaluates the “Lidington Compromise”, by which the UK Government moved to enfranchise day-release prisoners, alongside Scottish and Welsh Parliaments opening up new aspects of the confrontation by moving to enfranchise some prisoners on the basis of sentence length. It assesses the significance of these moves in the context of devolution. It also examines how these different approaches to resolving the prisoner voting issue square with the Strasbourg Court's jurisprudence and the extent to which different understandings of democratic rights now prevail across the United Kingdom.
ISSN:1364-9809
1755-1692
DOI:10.3366/elr.2021.0713