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Comment on prisoner voting (2 November 2010)

Commenting on reports that the Government will announce this week that prisoners are to get the right to vote, Jon Collins, Campaign Director for the Criminal Justice Alliance, said:

"The decision to give prisoners the vote is long overdue. It is more than six years since the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK's disenfranchisement of all sentenced prisoners is illegal, yet the ban remains in place.

"The Government cannot pick and choose which court decisions it complies with, and delaying the decision any longer will simply lead to more legal wrangling at additional cost to the taxpayer.

"The UK's ban on prisoners voting serves no useful purpose, while damaging efforts to rehabilitate prisoners and reduce reoffending. Voting is a right, not a privilege, and the Government is doing the right thing by acting now to overturn this outdated and illegal ban."