Prisoner voting rights on a European perspective: the cases of McHugh & others v. The United Kingdom and Thierry Delvigne v. Commune de Lesparre Médoc
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14600/irpps_wps.98.2017Keywords:
Prisoners' right to vote, Criminal justice, Human rights, European Court of Justice, European Court of Human RightsAbstract
This paper will study the issue of felon disenfranchisement across Europe, focusing on the need for a change in the legislation of those Member States of the Council of Europe, preventing all offenders from voting while serving their time in prison. These laws, equally condemned by both the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), are nowadays considered as contributing to the dehumanization of prisoners through the deprivation of that fundamental right, the right to vote, which should be a guarantee of democracy. Following the rationale of two recent cases on the issue, brought before the above-mentioned Courts, the paper will then analyse on what grounds a Member State can restrict the right to vote of detainees. To do so, the paper will consider two different systems adopted by several Member States namely: a system disenfranchising prisoners on a sentence length basis and a system depriving of the right to vote only prisoners having committed select offences, i.e. those targeting the democratic structure of the State.References
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