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Voting by Prisoners

In the debate in Westminster Hall on 11 January, I quoted Justice Dennis Challeen. He said—I will précis it—that we want people to be responsible, but we deny them more responsibility; that we want them to think of others, but we put them in situations where they do not. As for using the vote, if people could start saying what kind of society they want to be part of, and if they want to be law-abiding subjects and useful citizens on release, as many do, then it could be part rehabilitation. However, I do not believe that by giving the vote we will suddenly find the reconviction rate dropping by 20 points. That would be ambitious. Those are ambitions that we ought to have—I am glad that tribute has been paid to what the Lord Chancellor is proposing to do to change our penal system to make it work better—but would it not be even better if many fewer people were committing criminal offences for the first time, and if the period in which they did were reduced even faster? Winston Churchill's speech as Home Secretary from 1910 can be quoted, but that point is on the record, so I will not go into that. What I would say, to those who want to start condemning the Prison Reform Trust or the Howard League, or those such as myself—I have served on the council of both Nacro and Mind, the National Association for Mental Health, and I was chairman of the Children's Society, trying to deal with those at risk of becoming serious and serial criminals—is that we have to recognise that most of the people whom we are talking about are bad, mad or sad, or a combination. However, they are not always that all the time, so the sooner we start learning how to get deterrents, prevention, rehabilitation and can convert them to law-abiding citizens, the better. I hope that we shall have this debate again, but after splitting the issues, so that we can make progress on both.