The Irish Penal Reform Trust, "an independent nongovernmental organisation campaigning for the rights of everyone in the penal system, with prison as a last resort," has just released "Picking up the Pieces": The Rights and Needs of Children and Families Affected by Imprisonment. It describes the effect of imprisonment on those who "must endure their own sentence, despite not having perpetrated any crime." Some of the problems discussed are: the impact of separation, barriers to visitation and maintaining the parent-child relationship, stigmatization, mental health issues, and difficulties in reunification. While the report's recommendations are not applicable to all countries, since it was written in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the impact of a parent's imprisonment is universal. Among the more standard suggestions for reform is one that recommends:
The best interests of the child should be a key consideration in proceedings where a parent may be remanded or sentenced to custody.
The report also suggests that impact statements from children of parents about to be sentenced "would be one practical approach which would permit the voice of the child to be heard."
Interesting reading!
From Peter Wagner:
In anticipation of the recent election, Prison Policy Initiative and Josh Begley produced an intriguing inforgraphic entitled: "Should the states that bar the most people from the poles be allowed to pick the next president?" Whether or not disenfranchisement changed the ultimate outcome this time around, it certainly had an impact on the popular vote. As Peter wrote, "the graphic links the obscenely high rates of lifetime disentranchisement in Virginia and Florida with those states' status as "swing" states ...."
The Sentencing Project recently published Felony Disenfranchisement: An Annotated Bibliography (March 2012). The document covers the past twenty years of disenfranchisement studies and analysis which, it is noted "examine disenfranchisement from a variety of perspectives – law, social science, history, and journalism [and] provide new estimates of the statistical impact of disenfranchisement, assess legal and moral perspectives on the policy, and place the issue in a comparative international context." Links are provided to a number of the articles cited in the online version. The information for the bibliography was compiled by Benjamin Bronstein, Jerome Pierce, and Achilles Sangster II. Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project, was the editor.
Is the European Court on Human Rights, which provided significant encouragement for prisoner voting rights advocates with its decisions in Hirst v. The United Kingdom (no.2), Application no. 74025/01 (6 October 2005), and Greens and M.T. v. The United Kingdom, Application nos. 60041/08 and 60054/08, (3 November 2010, final 11 April 2011), now modifying its position? Its most recent prisoner voting rights decision, Scoppola v. Italy (no. 3), Application no. 126/05 (22 May 2012), makes you wonder. First, some context ...
In Hirst, the applicant was serving a life sentence for manslaughter and was thereby barred from voting in parliamentary or local elections under section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which states: "A convicted person during the time that he is detained in a penal institution in
pursuance of his sentence ... is legally incapable of voting at any
parliamentary or local election." The ECHR Grand Chamber held that this provision
strips of their Convention right to vote a significant category of persons
and it does so in a way which is indiscriminate. The provision imposes a blanket
restriction on all convicted prisoners in prison. It applies automatically to
such prisoners, irrespective of the length of their sentence and irrespective of
the nature or gravity of their offence and their individual circumstances. Such
a general, automatic and indiscriminate restriction on a vitally important
Convention right must be seen as falling outside any acceptable margin of
appreciation, however wide that margin might be, and as being incompatible with
Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.
Five years later, in Greens and M.T., the ECHR expressed its impatience with the UK. The applicants were again convicted prisoners who were
subject to the blanket ban on voting under section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which had not been amended since the Hirst decision. The Court reiterated its position that it would be inappropritate for it "to specify what should be the
content of future legislative proposals ...." At the same it, it expressed it "view that the lengthy
delay to date has demonstrated the need for a timetable for the introduction of
proposals to amend the electoral law to be imposed." The U.K. was given six months from the date of this final judgment for "the enactment of an electoral law to achieve compliance with the
Court's judgment in Hirst
...." After the U.K inter- vened in Scoppola, commencement of the time limit was deferred after a decision in that case.
Italian Presidential Decree no. 223/1967, section 2, provides: "The following persons shall not vote: ... persons who have been sentenced to penalties entailing
a lifetime ban from public office...[and] persons under a temporary ban from public office, for
the duration of that ban." The applicant, who had been convicted of murder and other charges and sentenced to to thirty years’ imprisonment and a lifetime ban from public office,was deleted from the electoral roll. Unlike the prior cases, the Italian law was not applied "to all individuals sentenced to a term of
imprisonment but only to those sentenced to a prison term of three years or
more [and it] adjusts the duration of the measure to the sentence
imposed and thus, by the same token, to the gravity of the offence ...." Noting that "the rights enshrined in Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 are not absolute," the Grand Chamber found that the provision in question was not "excessively rigid" and did not overstep the "margin of appreciation" accorded to each State "to mould into its own democratic vision." It concluded, therefore, that there was no violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.
At the same time, the Grand Chamber rejected the U.K.'s argument that the Hirst decision should be re-examined and reaffirmd that:
the principles set out by the Grand Chamber in the Hirst
judgment ..., in particular the fact that when
disenfranchisement affects a group of people generally, automatically and
indis- criminately, based solely on the fact that they are serving a prison
sentence, irrespective of the length of the sentence and irrespective of the
nature or gravity of their offence and their individual circumstances, it is not
compatible with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.
This latest case has already gendered comment, especially in the U.K. See, for example: Prisoner Voting and Strategic Judging by Marko Milanovic, lecturer in law at the University of Nottingham School of Law, European Courtof Human Rights Retreats But Doesn’t Surrender on Prisoner Votes by Adam Wagner, founding editor of the UK Human Rights Blog and
a barrister specializing in public law, human rights, and medical law. and ECtHR Grand Chamber Judgment: Scoppola v. Italy by Barrister
and former U.K. government advisor Carl Gardner.
