BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Gervase
Date: 21 Jan 11 - 05:52 PM

Dave, when a burglar is released from prison, would you want him;
a) to go back to burgling, the only trade he knows, because it pays for the drugs habit, or
b) to do something else because he's off the drugs, doesn't need to raise £200 a day to feed his habit and is capable of holding down a job, can now read and write and feels for the first time in his life that he can contribute to society rather than simply take from it?

Or should I put a (c) option for the Daily Mail readers - no-one should ever be released from prison?

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: GUEST,999
Date: 21 Jan 11 - 06:11 PM

Just saw this:

`Prisoners exercise their right to vote
Updated Wed. Jan. 11 2006 10:13 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Friday was voting day for prisoners across Canada. About 35,000 were eligible to vote, and many seemed to be voting Liberal in order to protect privileges that Conservatives threaten to take away.`


Huh.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 21 Jan 11 - 07:39 PM

Gervase, did someone force him to take drugs ? I think not, it's a lifestyle choice, if someone deliberately puts themselves outside the rule of law, they must live with the consequences of their illegal actions, having been a victim of crime, I have no sympathy.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 21 Jan 11 - 09:23 PM

Bruce, as much as the RCMP have fucked up of late they can't carry the blame for Donald Marshall. That fuck up started with the Sydney City Police Department and continued through a court system loaded with crown attorneys and judges who fucked up as well. There has been some effort since to remove racism from Nova Scotia's legal system but some things are still badly lacking. For instance an RCMP officer entered an Indian's home against orders and shot him dead. The reason for the Mountie to be there was a fear that the Indian would commit suicide. Well he sure as Hell prevented that! The band chief and the family continue to be stonewalled by the RCMP,legal system and government for full disclosure.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 12:55 AM

Eliza: You are obviously a good and well-meaning person, and, despite the somewhat sour tone of my last response to you, I have much respect for you and sympathy with your views. And I agree that the extent to which punishments should be enforced is an intransigent problem.

The trouble is, indeed, the whole concept of "punishment" itself. The idea that, because someone has departed from Society's norms and expectations, they should be forced in return to undergo an experience they would rather not have undergone (whatever form it might take, from loss of money to loss of liberty to the pain of a birch across the bottom or a hot iron on the hand), is clearly illogical, irrational, and altogether absurd, even though it might give some satisfaction to their victims to contemplate their having suffered in their turn.

Unfortunately, no society seems ever to have come up with a better idea...

This might be worth a thread of its own. Think I will start one and see if anyone responds.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 05:57 AM

The burglars in prison carry on 'burgling'. One young chap I was visiting at The Mount Prison in Hertfordshire emerged from the prisoners' door in tears, because 'someone had stolen his bag of sugar'. I'm afraid I flippantly replied that amazingly there was obviously a thief in the building! The man was serving a four year sentence for... burglary, but he couldn't see things from a victim's point of view. After the visit I told one of the officers, and we had a good laugh. Apparently, everything in there goes missing, they're at it all the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 06:25 AM

Best to keep the buggers there for a long time then, than let them out to steal from decent, honest, hard-working people.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 06:38 AM

Dave Hanson, this raises the interesting question of free will doesn't it? I (and presumably you) have not got drug habits and don't burgle, steal or commit crime. I expect you would say we have chosen to be law abiding, and the criminals have decided to go wrong. But WHY have they decided that? In many cases, they have been dragged up on sink estates, with no parental role-models of any worth, surrounded by villainy from day one. Drugs are a part of life there, and of course necessitate theft to fund them. These are not excuses, but REASONS. I don't condone their evil acts, I'm merely academically interested in whether they truly have exercised free will, or are reacting to unavoidable circumstances in their genetics and early lives. I remember discussing free will in Moral Philosophy at Uni (a long long time ago), and it's a tricky thing to nail down.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 06:52 AM

"It is being foisted on an unwilling population by unelected European judges."
As distinct from British judges who are, of course, elected and have to put up for re-election on a regular basis!!!
All the usual 'hang 'em and flog em' suspects in full attendance, I see.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 09:53 AM

... who would presumably, Jim, reply "and all the do·gooding bleeding·❤❤s likewise"! I honestly can't see what you think will be gained by namecalling of those whose opinions are different from yours. As you once said to me in a similar sort of argument, you are better than that.

Best

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 09:56 AM

Just for the record Eliza, my mother raised four children to adulthood on her own, my father having died when I was six, [ I'm 64 now ] most of the time in poverty, none of us ever became criminals or committed criminal acts, certainly none of us was ever violent, I was the only one ever to appear in court, I was charged with fishing without a licence and found not guilty. It's a choice, my two brothers, my sister and I made the right one.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 10:07 AM

Mike - society has progressed, or should have done, beyond 'taking revenge' on those who commit crimes - the punative approach has never worked and is now recognised as not having worked.
I have no problem with the 'do-gooder' description as the opposite is 'do-badder', which would you opt for?
Hang 'em and flog 'em is not an invention of mine
Jim Carroll.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 10:47 AM

Thanks for that info, Sandy.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 10:57 AM

We have unelected British judges Jim, but they do not have the power to demand voting rights for any particular group.
Cameron has conceded that there is no call for this from parliament or the people, but we must accept it anyway because unelected European judges have decreed it.
I have not expressed an opinion either way on the issue, just the undemocratic nature of the process.
There is nothing to justify labelling me as a member of any "hang 'em' and flog 'em" group.
Once again you resort to personal attack instead of replying to what is actually posted.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 11:06 AM

Sorry, called away before I could finish
Hang 'em and flog 'em is not an invention of mine - I have spent a lifetime listening to those who would return us to the barbaric days of hanging and flogging - enough examples on this forum for us to be going on with.
Don't know about you, but, given the present economic climate, arrived at by greed, corruption, outright dishonesty and incompetence on the part of our 'betters' I am expecting a sharp rise in crime - hands up all those who expect the people who got us into the present situation to receive the punishment they undoubtedly deserve for their activities!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 12:34 PM

Dave, I am sorry to hear that your childhood had its difficulties, but I am sure your mother had good moral standards, and imparted them to you. It isn't poverty per se which gives rise to criminality but moral poverty. Even people living on a 'sink estate' are incredibly well-off compared to many West African families I have seen. But the moral compass is missing, as are any decent role models. Violence is commonplace, and parenting lamentably bad. A child raised thus is very likely to offend when older.

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 01:09 PM

Jim ~~ I do, really, take your point. That is the point of the parallel thread to this one that I have OP'd, just on "The concept of 'punishment'" per se ~~ that punishment is at best a negative & futile reaction to wrongdoing at every level, from hanging and flogging and torture to smacked wrists and school detentions and 'grounding' & bed-without-supper ~~

~~ but if any society [apart just possibly from certain very small Native American tribes mentioned by one poster] has ever thought up an alternative, or contrived somehow to do without it, I have never heard of it ~~ and neither has anyone who has so far posted, either here or there.

So what do you suggest?

~Michael~

Might be worth mentioning, here & I will put it on the other thread also, that in my teaching days I would often say to a new class, "I don't believe in punishment", & they would look pleased ~~ until I added, "You start!".

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 02:48 PM

I actually agree with you Eliza, prison doesn't work, and no one knows the answer, but while a hardened criminal is in prison he is not at liberty to go about his illegal business, I nearly included drug dealers but their work seem to carry on even in the clink.

Deep down I know that depriving people in prison of the rights can only have a negative effect but we've long since passed the point where people jump to the defence of the criminals before their victims, you see this every time a householder defends himself against a burglar and gets prosecuted for it.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 03:43 PM

"So what do you suggest?"
I have no problem in making criminals answerable to the law Mike, as long as any punishment they receive is overwhelmingly biased towards deterring them from re-offending - where preventing one from voting lies in the grand scheme of things is completely beyond me. That seems like totally and formally alienating him or her from the society we would wish them to be law-abiding members of. Unless our prisons become places of reform, they serve as little more than acts of vengeance guaranteed to produce hardened malcontents armed with skills developed and honed in the very prisons they have been incarcerated in.
I find discussions like this extremely hypocritical, as they are invariably focused on punishing criminals and completely ignore the the behaviour of CRIMINALS.
Last night I watched a CRIMINAL on television; he was emerging from an enquiry into his behaviour, which has led to many thousands of deaths in an illegal war entered into against the wishes of the vast majority of the people who elected him into office. Not only did he refuse to acknowledge his CRIMES, but it is quite likely that he will never have to face legal charges for them.
Over the last few years I have watched with growing anger while it has been revealed that many politicians are in fact CRIMINALS who have systematically defrauded the taxpayer in order to build palaces for their ducks and claim expenses for the upkeep of non-existant residences. Had they been criminals they would have had to face the full force of the law; but as they are merely CRIMINALS, they will never have to answer for CRIMES that have taken millions from the health and education services, and have lowered the standards of living of us proles, who, had we been guilty of similar practices, would be viewing the world through the bars of a prison cell.
Need I go on?
The irony of it all is, of course, that the very CRIMINALS I have just mentioned all play a part in making the laws that they appear to consider themselves above.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Voting 'rights' for convicts
From: Irene M
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 04:16 PM

I am puzzled by the practical issue.
Do they have a vote in the constiuency in which the prison is located or their "home" constituency?
The former could lead to a very interesting outcome given general voter apathy.