 Fel chyfnodaeth, rwy'n rhywbeth i ddweud y sefydlu gyda F Thrace Cymru i Gwyl unrhyw gwllwgau diogelio i Gwyl yn 18, i ddweud yr swingsgawr o flynyddiwch yn gwondol unrhyw gyntafol cysylltydd, ac mae gyda'r oedden nhw yn ei ddweud, mae'n gwleidio i unrhyw fydd ym unig ofeth gyda'r ffrindinol o ffnot yn ynnig o'u ddechrau, a ydy'r ffocuse ond ymwysig o ffrindinol o ffrindinol o'n gysylltydd o'ch dynnwys. Cymru. Dr Cormack Behan, lecherer in criminology at the University of Sheffield. Good morning, Dr Behan, and thank you so much for your written evidence. Good morning, thank you for your invitation. With us is Emma Trotier, who is the former public servant with the correctional services of Canada and the Canadian Department of Public Safety. Good morning, Emma, and thank you so much for your evidence to us preceding the meeting too. Good morning, thank you for having me. I'm going to start by asking the first question. I think it's a general question really about where in both the jurisdictions that you both have been involved in the process that you went through to get to where you are. I know that it's slightly different for both both Ireland and Canada, but Dr Behan, if I can start with you, if you gave us an understanding of the Irish example and how it got to where it got to. I suppose that the Irish example was somewhat unique in that prior to the enfranchisalism and prisoners, there was no law in the statute book to which it actually debarred prisoners from voting. It was simply that they couldn't access polling stations on the day of elections, or referenda, etc. There was no legislation to be repealed to enable prisoners to vote. In a court case in the early 2000s, the Supreme Court said that prisoners still were entitled to vote under the 1992 electoral act. However, there was no facility to allow them to vote. However, they said, if an individual happened to be on temporary release on the day of an election and they were registered in their home constituency, they were still entitled and legally entitled to exercise their franchise. In 2006, in response to the Hearst judgment, which I'm sure many on the committee are familiar with, the Irish Government decided to introduce legislation to enfranchise prisoners. For a number of reasons, there was some discussion about whether there would be a case brought through the domestic courts and possibly up to the European Court to allow prisoners to vote or to force the Government to introduce legislation. So, preantively, the Government decided to introduce legislation. It introduced legislation in an electoral act in 2006. When it did, it introduced legislation to enfranchise all prisoners, regardless of sentence and regardless of their crime, which was quite wide, obviously, in its impact and its effect. When that happened, the first election took place in 2007, but what was somewhat unique about the Irish experience is the lack of controversy surrounding the discussions and surrounding the actual debates in Parliament. In the first instance, in boath houses in Parliament, in the Dall, the Lower House and the Shannot, the Upper House, no member of Parliament spoke against this, no member voted against it, and much of the discussion in the parliamentary debates were about the mechanics of how it happens and to try to do as an argument that prisoners should be encouraged, should be enabled and encouraged to vote to engender a sense of responsibility. One or two other kind of key aspects of, I would think, is that there was no media opposition. In my research, I found only one reference in a national newspaper to the actual debates, and that's when the legislation was actually passed. That's in stark contrast, for example, to the research that I've done in the United Kingdom, where the media have tended to report on this as a matter of acute controversy and generally have come down against allowing prisoners to vote. Other element, which I think was important, was that it was introduced as an electoral reform. It was introduced by the Minister for the Environment, the Local Government rather than a penal reform or a criminal justice reform, so it was put forward as an idea to modernise the electoral system. In contrast to what happened in the United Kingdom, there was a much more positive outlook and much more positive idea about the concept of Europe. In the United Kingdom, especially in England, in the Westminster Parliament, it has been caught up in the debates about Europe, even though it's the European Convention and the European Court of Human Rights, which is not the European Union, it has just been caught up in the general milieu and debates around the actual impact and the powers of the European Union and European, what was considered European interference. I think that there was a number of key elements there that distinguished it from other jurisdictions and enabled what was, in reality, a very minor piece of amending legislation but made a major impact in terms of enfranchising all prisoners regardless of sentence or crime. Okay, thank you. It's interesting points and I'll come back to some of them. Emma, if you could explain to us the Canada situation because it's similar to the situation here and as much as it's a court order that's precipitated the change. If I could first, I want to explain the division in Canada's correctional system because it's important to the story. Canada's correctional system is divided in two ways. First, where a sentence of imprisonment is imposed, there's a dividing line that's set at two years. So if you're serving a sentence of two years less a day, you're sent to a prison and if you're sentenced to two years or more, you're sentenced to a penitentiary and prisons are managed by our provincial and territorial governments whereas sentences of two years or more are managed by the federal government and that becomes important as I go on about the court challenges. Quebec was the first province in Canada to allow its prisoners, its provincial prisoners to vote and that was in 1979. It only permitted prisoners to vote in provincial elections but it disbarred prisoners who were serving a sentence for violating the Elections Act from voting. The next stage of the story is in 1982 when the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into force and what that is is it's part two of our constitution. What that did, what the Charter did, what the Constitution did, was it set out in section three that every citizen has the right to vote and what happened was that some provinces in Canada after the Charter came into force allowed prisoners to vote so Manitoba and Newfoundland joined Quebec in allowing prisoners to vote but what that did was it created disparity across Canada. Voting at least for prisoners was dependent on where you were incarcerated, the length of your sentence and what type of election it was so provincial versus federal. Two years after the Charter came into force a prisoner called Rick Souvet who was serving a lengthy sentence introduced what we call a Charter challenge so constitutional challenge to the prisoner voting ban and it wasn't until 1993 that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the total ban on prisoner voting was unconstitutional. That same year the Canadian Parliament so the federal government introduced a bill which was passed by parliament that removed the disqualification for prisoners serving sentences of two years less a day but it maintained the ban on federal prisoners so those serving two years or more. The new provision that kept the ban on federal prisoners from voting was challenged again by Rick Souvet and it wasn't until 2002 so it took almost 10 years for the case to make its way through Canadian courts for it to reach the Supreme Court of Canada again and again the Supreme Court of Canada found that the legislation infringing on prisoners' right to vote was not a reasonable limit of that right and if I can go into it more if you're interested on why the Supreme Court ruled that but it was also included in my written evidence. So since 2002 all prisoners in Canada have the right to vote and their first vote in a federal election happened in 2004. Oh, there's loads of questions in here and I know that the rest of the committee have got lots of questions but I was very struck by the fact in both examples that all prisoners have the right to vote and the UK Government has proposals for the rest of the UK apart from Scotland on where they will go with the judgment that was passed on them and it's the most minimal amount that they would do and it's only if you happen to be out of prison on the day that there's an election that that would happen. Was that a consideration in both the circumstances in Canada and Ireland or was it as Dr Behan described that there wasn't really a lot of debate here? All prisoners were getting the vote and it was about how do we facilitate people getting the vote? Is that the way it worked, Dr Behan? Yes, I suppose it begins with a philosophical belief in whether you want to give prisoners the right to vote and certainly in the Republic of Ireland the debates around that seem to be if we're going to enfranchise prisoners or enable them more than enfranchise them because legally they still had the right to vote although they couldn't exercise it on election day so we're going to enable them to vote it was more about the mechanics of how we're going to do it rather than the debates about which have happened in other jurisdictions who should be allowed to vote should it be related to sentence or should it be related to crime but the discussions in Ireland was very much about the practicalities. How is this going to actually be not just enacted but facilitated within the prison itself? That was through postal voting? Yes, what happened was that the legislation enabled prisoners to vote by way of postal voting so they just added another section of postal voting to the constituencies so for example there's postal voting for people who are infirm and can't make it to an election or are out of the country on diplomatic business etc. There's six different types of postal voters and this was just another category of postal votes. Emma, given that the two tier system with the two years less a day and two years plus a day situation was there a consideration there about whether length sentence or crime should be taken into account and whether people get the right to vote but obviously Canada came down on the side of all people getting the right to vote eventually? Yeah, eventually it took about 10 years but yes even though the decision had come out in 1993 that the decision to the blanket ban on voting was unconstitutional the federal government chose to or as we would say in Canada the government tried to comply with the court ruling but still chose to maintain the ban on two years or more in which the court in 2002 found was an arbitrary decision. Okay, thank you. Would you go to open questions? Mary, do you want to come in first? Can I just pick up on something that both of you have said and it's about how the public perceived the decision to give the prisoners the vote because there has been a fair amount of discussion and debate across the UK about whether or not prisoners should have the right to vote and people come down very much on one side or the other. There's either a no absolutely not or a yes and there is a very kind of slight grey area in the middle and I'm just interested in why both of you think particularly Dr Behan why it's so uncontroversial in Ireland. I mean the media in this country as you probably be aware there are certain media outlets in this country that take a very particular view on offenders and portray them in a particular way and I'd be interested whether that was the same in both Ireland and Canada and how the public got on board with this? Okay, I suppose what was remarkable I think about my research that I found in the Republic of Ireland was the lack of discussion and lack of debate outside of the Parliament itself. I did analysis of six different newspapers, some of which would take the popular press that are Irish editions of the popular press that would take a different line here. This discussion wasn't even mentioned in those newspapers in the Republic of Ireland. In only one newspaper was there in the parliamentary report of the actual passing of legislation. It began in October 2006 and true to committee stages etc. It was finally passed in December 2006 and it was just a small report saying that this has actually been passed. The lack of controversy has struck me in terms of I've lived in the United Kingdom now for the last six and a half years and looking at how newspapers and the kind of discourse around it has actually been framed is very very different. I would say one of the issues here in the United Kingdom has been a kind of perfect storm of a law and order issue, along with what is seen as our argued to be European interference or judicial activism. All of these coming together seem to have created a much greater controversy than, for example, in the Republic of Ireland where it was introduced as an electoral rather than a penal reform or criminal justice reform. Therefore it wasn't the same debates around a punitive approach that might be in terms of the treatment of prisoners in the Republic of Ireland than in the United Kingdom. Remarkably, no parliamentarian spoke out against the legislation, whereas in the House of Commons there have been debates and backbench debates where Parliament has said that it's a matter for the UK Parliament alone and not for anybody else to decide and they came down and decided that the legislation as it exists should stay as it exists. Now in order has been some developments just at the end of last year where the Secretary of State for Justice has introduced very minimal and limited voting for a very very small number of prisoners in response to the Hearst judgment. Emma, just before you come in, can I come back to the point that you made about electoral reform? Do you think that we need to find a way in the UK to change the discussion? The discussion at the moment is centred quite firmly that it is a justice issue, that it is a penal reform. We need to change that discourse and discussion to move it to electoral reform and that will change the way that people perceive it. I think that it reflects two things. First of all, it probably reflects the much wider debates about the attitudes towards prisoners and people who commit crime in the United Kingdom. Therefore, to bring that to a more rational discussion about how we treat people, what's effective, how we deal with prisoners, how we encourage them to reintegrate into society afterwards, how we encourage them to participate in a community within prison and maintain their connection with society outside. I think that there is that issue. The other thing that I would argue as a student of politics and history is that we should encourage all citizens to participate as widely as possible in democratic dialogue. Therefore, if we facilitate as wide a number of people as possible in through electoral reform, that creates a more vibrant democratic state and opportunity for people to civically engage. If you look at the research around voting, it indicates that those who vote are more likely to be civically involved in many other areas. They look at everything from charitable effects to community groups to parent-teacher associations, etc. There is a connection now, but one leads to the other. There is some discussion about that, but it certainly does engender the sense of civic engagement and civic responsibility. That is enabled by electoral change. The discussion around criminal justice issues and treatment of prisoners is bigger issues that I think need to be discussed as well. Emma, what was the situation in Canada? How did the public perceive this? I should say that I only know from having spoken to fellow Canadians that are far more knowledgeable in this area than I am, because at the time that this happened, I was quite young. Do not remember it first hand. What I can say is that some of the concerns that came out from the public was that because of where institutions were and how populated they were, so I think our biggest facility is about 500 prisoners, that it would sway that riding in one direction or the other. Another concern was that we have given them the right to vote, but they are not going to use it, they are not going to vote, and that it would be too difficult and time-consuming to facilitate voting in all of the prisons and penitentiaries across Canada. All of those concerns that were raised in 1993 and again in 2002 have never materialized, in part because of the way that we have structured elections for prisoners in Canada, so they do not vote in the riding of their penitentiary or prison, they vote in their home riding. There is evidence that suggests that prisoners vote almost in equal numbers as to the rest of Canadians in the general population. In terms of being too difficult or time-consuming, we have learned through the last few federal elections that we have had that it actually is not that difficult to make it happen because elections in Canada hold polling stations in all of our prisons and penitentiaries. That is interesting. I will ask a follow-up question about the take-up of voting, because that is another argument that we have heard used here. If you give prisoners the vote, none of them will use it, because they will not be interested. The point that you make about take-up of voting is much the same as in the wider population. It is very interesting, and I would be interested in Dr Beehan's view on that. The other point that has been made is, well, are you going to have hustings in prisons? Are you going to set up polling stations in prisons? I tend to think that it is people who just do not want prisoners to have the right to vote, are putting up—in some cases—quite ridiculous obstacles to why they should not vote. Uptake of voting in Ireland, was it very high? In the first election in 2007, 14 per cent of the prison population registered and 10 per cent overall voted. It was about 75 per cent of the registered population that actually went out to vote. It has been quite low at that time. It was just the first time. Obviously, there would be maybe teething problems the first time that is actually happening for both electoral officials and prison officials. It has been generally under 10 per cent since then, because I have conducted research on a number of elections since then. I would say that the prisoner population voting reflects the demographic of the people outside. Generally, in the Republic of Ireland, those who are sent to prison are young, urban males with a low level of traditional educational attainment, and they tend to have low levels of trust, low levels of civic engagement and low levels of voting outside. It is probably not surprising that that demographic, which is predominantly represented in the prison population, once they get to prison, they do not necessarily change their patterns. What has happened is that those who are most likely to vote in my research, I found, are those who voted before, those who have a higher level of trust in civic institutions, those who have greater levels of education. If you look at the demographic inside of those who vote, it reflects the demographic outside of those who vote, are indeed vice versa, who do not. I think that the debates are twofold. Number one is whether there is a belief that prisoners should be entitled to vote, and then if that, if you go down that road, or you believe it shouldn't, but if you believe prisoners should have the right to it, then there's the practicalities. Prisons are flexible institutions in ways that they respond to different changes in penal policy over time. In the Republic of Ireland, what happened was the prisoners were given their ballot. It was organised by the local electoral authorities. They were given their ballot paper. It was put into another envelope. That envelope was then signed and it was a kind of mini, what would you say, polling booth was set up within each prison. It wasn't a huge owner's task on the prison authorities. I think secondly, why not have hostings in prisons? Why not go to prisons and find out what prisoners actually think? We do it with every other area of engagement today. I'm in university. We talk to students. The health service. We talk to patients. We talk to the constituencies which are involved in any whether services we provide. Therefore, I would encourage politicians, yes, to go into prisons, have hostings in prisons, engage prisoners, and put it up to them that they have a responsibility also to participate in the elections as a form of civic engagement. That's very helpful. Thank you, convener. Alex Cole-Hamilton Thank you, convener. Good morning. Thank you for coming to see us today. I found your opening presentations fascinating. I think we've got a great panel here because we've got two examples. A country where there was an outright disqualification on prisoner voting and a country which, very like Britain, didn't have a stated disqualification of voting. It's fair to say that the UK and Ireland mirrored each other in the sense that there was this antiquated Victorian notion of civic death on incarceration that you just didn't participate in the normal run of human life in the country that you inhabited while you were incarcerated. I'm really also interested in the disparity that exists between Britain and Ireland in the fact that we have a huge hostile press to the idea of civic voting for prisoners. I think that that hostile right-wing press is the same hostile right-wing press that doesn't see prison as a means of rehabilitation, it sees it as a punishment, it talks up the fact that we give luxuries to prisoners in prisons and they hold the public to a certain degree in their thrall. First question to Dr Behan. Ireland managed to do this because I don't think that you have that culture, you don't have that europhobic prisoner bashing right-wing media that we have in the UK, so you had an easier run. Are there international examples of countries that have brought this in against the tide of public opinion as we face in the United Kingdom? I think that it's up to private newspapers or private media to decide on their perspectives and then I suppose politicians to either respond, take that on board but I haven't come across any jurisdictions where there has been a public backlash against prisoner voting and politicians introduced this legislation in spite of that. I think what has happened is that in the jurisdictions that has actually been introduced, many times it has been the judiciary that have forced the issue and have pushed it and Governments have responded to that. In the Republic of Ireland, as you say, there are somewhat unique characteristics but I think it reflects maybe a different and less punitive approach to the treatment of prisoners, to what we expect from the institutions when we send them to prison and it really comes down to what are the objectives of punishment and what do we expect from prison and if we expect prison to exclude people, to contain people, to take them out of society for a period of time, generally they do that fairly well. They generally can achieve that goal but if we want prisons to be a place where people have an opportunity for reflection, for the potential for change and for transformation, then I would look at it and argue that enabling prisoners to participate as widely as possible in society outside might be what a resistance scholar is called, one of the hooks for change, where people begin to see that yes, on election day every individual's vote is the same, every individual is equal on election day and therefore if prisoners are given that opportunity it's one of what I would consider as a kind of wider mosaic of citizenship to encourage prisoners to participate and to see their role as contributing to society and giving something back as well as having responsibilities, they also have obligations and can contribute to society both inside and that might engender a sense of commitment to lead a kind of pro-social law abiding life outside. Thank you. Emma, in terms of Canada, the blanket disqualification, when was that originally brought in? Well it wasn't, it depends if you look at provincial versus federal so in the 70s you had Quebec which was the only province that allowed it, 1979 and before that we're going all the way back to 1869. So the legislation is Victorian or yeah absolutely. Well where we got it from was... Indeed absolutely and I was fascinated to hear that the only backlash was a concern over the process. Since the ban was relaxed or removed has it been a feature of discussion in the Canadian press? So every time we come up to a federal election there is always something in the CBC news which is the Canadian equivalent of the BBC news about prisoners going to the polls because it happens 10 days before the election day for the remainder of Canada but it's a very neutral article highlighting that elections Canada officials are going into prisons across the country to facilitate prisoners' right to vote. Thank you and in respect of the democratic involvement of prisoners when they are so in franchise and we talked about hustings in prisons and I fully support that and I absolutely support the idea of extending the franchise. Do you think that there is or have you seen evidence either in the jurisdictions that you're representing or other jurisdictions that have extended the franchises to prisoners of that decision then shaping public policy towards penal reform that when politicians go into hustings they may see for the first time the visceral detail of the penitential system and thereby seek to try and woo the prison population through their manifestos is it worth? You can say no. You know I can't say. I know that we do have politicians or candidates that go into penitentiaries and prisons in the run up to elections and do hold meetings with prisoners while they're incarcerated. I don't know if that has shaped candidates' perceptions of our conditions of confinement. I would wager that it does given that some of them are quite harsh but I can't say with any certainty. Final follow-up on that if I may convener is that whilst you answered very eloquently Emma the argument that the vote of 500 prisoners in one penitentiary could sway an election in a riding but obviously if they're voting posterly for their ridings from which they come from that will just be the diffuse effect of voting and their votes will count along with all their neighbours. In that respect is it harder for those prisoners to engage in the democratic process because their candidate might be in a riding several hundred miles from where they're incarcerated. So are there means of prisoners engaging with the process remotely? I do think having worked for the correctional service of Canada during a federal election that it does make every effort to inform prisoners so that they receive web-based information as much as it can be facilitated. They have access to television so they can watch on the news what's being said in their respective ridings. So I do think that every effort is made to ensure that they have the information to make an informed decision on their vote. If I could pass the same question to Dr Barham. Yeah, I think I have found no evidence. I interviewed prisoners after a 2007 election and I found no evidence that there was this idea of a voting bloc. The idea that all prisoners would vote for one candidate I think is used by people who oppose enfranchisement and again it's used to try and say well they'll all vote for somebody who is anti-law or pro-criminal or use this to try and frighten people off. What's interesting is that when I asked prisoners to vote for the largest party in the Republic of Ireland in the 2007 election was Fina Foll, the largest party amongst prisoners was Fina Foll. They reflected the demographic of people outside and the idea again that politicians would go into prisons and see, humanise the experience for them but I think one of the things about facilitating prisoner voting is not only does it maintain a connection with prisoners inside to the outside but yes it should bring politicians in to see the conditions which their policies manifest as such in the institution and maybe it may not be the politician in question because as you point out somebody may be in a constituency far from a prison where an individual is located and during election time it's highly unlikely they're going to go up and see two or three voters but their political party could go in and engage and encourage people to vote along party lines for their particular candidate and have that debate about policies have that debate about how we engage prisoners but that might also not only give the prisoners a connection with the outside but bring the outside in to prison and see that at the end of the day prisons are public institutions they may be closed but what goes on therein is done through penal policy decided by politicians and that reflects the society that they're part of so what goes on in those institutions is done in the name of the citizens of each state even if they're run by private companies so therefore I think politicians going in and seeing how penal policy has actually impacted on a day-to-day basis and whether it's effective whether it works whether it leads to which is what the public good should be people coming out of prison not committing crime again that would be I think enrich a politician's understanding of the impact of their policies thank you on that point gail ross that was my going to be my exact question actually good morning thank you for coming in I think a lot of it is actually being covered the stuff that we were going to go over and covered very well so you know thank you very much for your evidence the rehabilitation side and dr behan exactly what you were just touching on there at the moment do you have are there any statistics from from either country about whether the introduction of allowing prisoners to vote has actually helped with the rehabilitation and the reoffending rates of prisoners I think in terms of people transforming their lives and not committing crime again it's rarely one particular element there are many what the distance callers call hooks for change and that can be maturation it can be maybe somebody intergenerativity somebody having a stable relationship and maybe having a child developing pro social bonds different communities outside maybe getting a job I'm feeling part of a community so I don't I haven't found evidence to say that the introduction of prisoner voting will actually lead to a lower recidivist rate however what I would say is that the introduction of prisoner voting sends a very powerful signal to prisoners both symbolic and in reality by allowing them to participate that their voice now is important and a part a part of the community so I'm not so sure in and of itself it will reduce crime but I think it's part of wider as I said this mosaic of citizenship where we tried to reduce the dislocation and the disconnection between those we sent to prison by maintaining some contact outside we had some evidence in a previous session and the trust issue was mentioned that we're actually placing our trust now in these people to make these important decisions that are going to affect their lives whether they continue on in prison or you know outside their prison and their families lives as well Emma do you have any comment on that um in terms of the trust element no but I did just want to add to what to your first question to say that when I was um when I first reached out to the clerks to um share the Canadian experience and then was invited to attend what I did was reach out to Rick Sove who is the Canadian prisoner that launched the legal challenge because I wanted to ask him you know why to do it and what was the impact and we shared some emails back and forth and what Rick did was he made this really interesting connection for me between you know the right to vote and responsibility so that you know sentences are meant to remove people from society not to take away their responsibilities as citizens and the message that I was getting from Rick which was meaningful to me was that disenfranchisement is more likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy than a spur to reintegration so that depriving at risk individuals of their sense of collective identity of their membership in the community is unlikely to instill a sense of responsibility and community identity whereas if you protect promote and respect that right to vote you're more likely to teach democratic values and social responsibility and I know that committee has heard already from individuals with lived experience of the criminal justice system but I would strongly encourage reaching out to individuals who have the experience of voting while being incarcerated and the impact that it has had. I'm going to let Jamie come in first and I'll come back to you Jamie Greene. Thank you convener, good morning panel and apologies to Dr Ben for missing the opening part of your statement but I have read through your submission. I guess one of the things I've been thinking about throughout this process is that if it is to happen in the UK that it is achieved not just through legislation but also that we must take the people with us on this and I'm intrigued that in the example of the Irish Republic that there was less for fuss I guess than the general public around it and whether that was media led or otherwise it does strike me as quite a big difference it seems to be something in this country which is an issue of contention I guess. So my question really is how we perhaps tackle some of the views or even misconceptions around what doing this would actually achieve and I guess I have two specific questions I think one you addressed around perceptions that there is a natural trend that prisoners will always vote against the government of the day because they are in prison during custody and they may be perhaps linked for someone to blame and it's easy to blame the government of the day they put them in that place in the first place but yours evidence suggests that's maybe not the case but in the example of Fianna Fawr winning that election was that a government change anyway so in that sense they were voting with wider society against an incumbent government. No it was Fianna Fawr had been in power and then they were returned to power in 1997. That puts that myth to bed quite easily and I guess the other one is around perhaps the example of what happens in Canada where the prisoner votes in their home constituency or riding as would likely be the case here. How do we combat the perception that if someone is removed from that community and this goes back to the philosophical question around whether they should have the vote I guess or not? How do we combat the opinion that if someone is removed from that community that they should not have a say on the elected members that are governing those communities of which they are no longer part of in a physical sense so MPs, councillors, members of the Scottish Parliament and so on. I guess I asked that not just in the philosophical way but in a practical way if those prisons are in long custodial sentences which are far beyond the electoral cycles of the election that they are voting in they will not be participating in those communities of which they are elected members which is actually the point of election is to elect your local member not just the government. I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier that your removal from society does not automatically result in taking away your responsibilities as a citizen and I think the way you're phrasing it is very focused on the individual voter but that individual voter we call prisoners they still have family that live in those communities they still have friends that live in those communities and it goes back to that sense of responsibility and wanting to instill in prisoners that sense of responsibility and wanting to maintain it so that when they do come back into society that they're not essentially starting from scratch but that they're still participating in the communities where they came from they're still caring about the individuals and who are their family members and friends. I suppose just to say just come back to the idea about the objective of imprisonment and if we use imprisonment as the denial of liberty or if we use prison for punishment so in the US there's much debate about what's called our collateral consequences of imprisonment are invisible punishments so the denial of liberty begins the punishment but that there are other punishments beyond the denial of liberty so if we go down that road then we say we take away not just an individual's liberty but taking away their right to vote is another layer of punishment above and beyond their denial of liberty. I would say one other thing is that in terms of the longitudinal consequences most young people or most people who end up in prison are at a young age initially and if we encourage them a tradition of voting at an early age then it does have longitudinal consequences in encouraging them to do that outside so using prison again as a place to engender democratic education can actually be important. Final point on that is just one of the experience of imprisonment in Scotland is similar to Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland there are some constituencies where there is a much greater number of people in prison from particular constituencies, a disproportionate number from various electoral districts and the impact that that may have in terms of building communities which I think should be an objective of all political leadership is building resilient communities. If a number of those are taken out of voting at a particular point in time that it can actually weaken the bonds of community where people are encouraged to participate not just in their community but in the democratic process? I find that very fascinating actually. The idea that it's not just about the person as an individual not being able to vote, it's about the fact that they come from communities where they have neighbours, families, colleagues, children, parents and so on and that the decision they make and who will represent that area is a decision that will affect the people that they are still connected to and will be connected to when they leave custody. So I think that that's perhaps a side of the argument that I hadn't appreciated before, so thank you for that evidence. We should also be quite clear actually that the argument about whether we should do this is one that are lost depending on what side you're on. The instruction now is we have to do it, so we have to look at ways and how we can do that, so hopefully we can investigate some of that. David, did you want a supplementary on Jamie's point? If you can come in on your supplementary and then I've got Mary next. Thank you convener and good morning everyone. We've mentioned before about the role that media played in 2002 and 2006 when prisoners were allowed to vote. There was no real big social media in those areas. How could we lessen the role of social media or get over to people who use it because it's very effective at going against people and inflaming a situation very very fast and the things like prison and voting would be stirred up by it? Are we opposite? Yes. How can we engage with them? Is there any examples anywhere we can give us? Social media is now a way for news rather than newspapers. I think I'll come back to political engagement and political leadership. I mean as I say newspapers and media have their own perspectives. Social media obviously can create a major storm around a particular issue at a particular moment in time but partly I think the way to do it is to look at this as an electoral reform and Scotland showed the way in the independence referendum when it enfranchised 16 and 17 year olds and I think the rest of the United Kingdom was looking at all in the engagement of the populace in Scotland around the debates on the Scottish referendum. So I think if we look at something like this, how do we encourage people to participate as widely as possible in their community and for a period of time prisoners are in a community? I think one of the ways is by unfortunately when people are sent to prison they're excluded from society and there's this idea that we don't need to worry about them because they're cut off and the rest of society. If we as I say I would encourage if I may be so bold to suggest that the committee might go into a prison speak to prisoners about their perspectives ask them what they actually think because I think it would enrich your deliberations and certainly you would get a unique perspective from those who would affect most prisoners but then you bring that debates back to the community back to your local areas and humanise the people that we sent to prison because many times they can be stigmatised, they can be othered and they can be excluded and the vast majority of prisoners in this jurisdiction throughout the United Kingdom and in Ireland will be released one day and how they're treated inside will have an impact on how they act outside. So I think it's a wider debate than just about prisoners and voting it's about our treatment of people who we incarcerate and how we label them, how we deal with them or how we are going to encourage them and I think it comes round to this idea of bringing the prisoners out by encouraging them in wider elements of civic engagement but also bringing the community in to see that these people, as Jamie Greene has said, you know their parents, their children, they have communities that they're part of and interestingly a point you made there about their concerns. In the research that I did I asked about what's the most important political issue in Ireland today and I said the health service. It was exactly the same as the community outside. The community outside might think it's all well, it's sentencing or the criminal justice system or penal policy, it wasn't, it isn't. They had the same concerns as their communities outside about the health service, etc. It's just a very brief question in some countries that allow prisoner voting that there is a ban or a partial ban depending on length of sentence or type of crime and the debate in this country has to a degree been very much focused on if you allow a prisoner to vote is it every prisoner, is it sentence, what type of crime. Do you think it's a hindrance to put the focus of the discussion on type of crime and length of sentence and we should have a principal discussion about should prisoners be allowed to vote and that should be our starting point. I of course have my prejudices on this subject which are probably obvious but yes in answer to your question when I was getting ready to appear today I went and I read some of the transcripts from the Westminster committee that in 2013 studied the what was it called the voting prisoners eligibility bill and those exact questions were coming up should we do this on sentence length the fence category and they had experts one who I greatly admired Julian Roberts who's a sentence thing expert at Oxford who tackled some of those questions and what Dr Roberts came out with was that neither is really a good solution to the issue because it ignores the wider question of what is the purpose of this you know what is the goal and I think if you look at the Canadian experience it's been pretty clear that the arguments that support the ban just don't stand up you know it's a constitutional right and the denial of a constitutional right without any limitation just was found to infringe on prisoners fundamental Dr Behan? I think if the debate could get sidetracked into individualising a particular crime are concentrating on a particular individual so for example a newspaper and social media or whatever it could turn into will you allow x to vote even though they've committed y crimes etc and I would argue that regardless of crime or sentence people have a part of the people are part of the community and they should participate in that community through voting so I think if you start going down the sentence and the crime route it will I think take away from the discussions about treatment of prisoners civic engagement participation etc and into because some people might want to individualise it would you allow x or y to vote and then you begin getting sidetracked into that instead of saying should we allow votes to prisoners and this is the way that we're actually going to do it. No that's helpful thank you. Thank you. Thanks Mary um Alex. Thank you I'm really struck by and indeed frustrated by the very arbitrary nature of the denial of the right to vote for Scottish prisoners for example if you'd started a prison sentence in a Scottish prison on the 9th of June 2014 for three years then you would have missed nine elections and referenda if you were to start a three-year sentence on the 9th of June 2017 you likely not to miss a single one and that would go for if you individualised the kind of sentence for which the right of vote was removed you could still have exactly the same situation for that crime say it was political dishonesty you would serve three years and miss nine elections in that period but not a single one in the next period so that's just a reflection on that point and my question comes back again to public opinion and this barrier we certainly have in where there may be some unified political will in Scotland to make this happen but that is not reflected in public opinion comes back to that age old question should public policy follow public opinion or lead it and I always use it this isn't the exact same thing it's a different issue but in Belgium when they brought in the end of physical punishment of children it was against an 80 percent resistance from the public which after 18 months of the ban coming in had completely turned around to 80 percent support are you both from jurisdictions which do you think are politically more disposed to leading public opinion rather than following it and can you give us other examples of where that's potentially the case if you think that's true I think if you had gone out and asked Canadians you know should all prisoners have the right to vote I think you would have had you know the majority come back and say no but I think because of the court decision and what they had to say in terms of the goals the purpose of punishment you know and whether governments have a right to deny you a constitutional freedom outright without any limitation that has really changed public opinion on the prisoners' right to vote yeah I don't yeah I do think that that the policy has shifted perceptions in Canada in terms of prisoners' right to vote I mean now it's news but it's not nasty news it's not you don't see headlines like why are they voting you know take it away it's very much just oh yeah I've got prisoners and they're voting today Dr Brian I think similar to Emma and what happened in Canada the odd time that you do see this discussion in newspapers coming up to elections when you know there's all sorts of political coverage and this is a kind of you know different angle they might go to prisons it is obviously as a postal vote it's a prisoner's castle ballad maybe a week 10 days beforehand and there is a report on how it went in the prisons the numbers who are actually voting etc rather than a debate about whether prisoners should have their have the right to vote at the time there was no opinion poll for example held outside as to whether the general public thinks that prisoners should have the right to vote when I undertook research on this in 2006 for a number of years when I spoke to people about it they were saying well do prisoners have the right to vote there was people were not very knowledgeable about whether they did or they didn't and I think that comes back to probably we don't tend to know huge amount of what goes on within our penal institutions in general as a populist because if we can exclude the people by sending in there it gives the impression that they're out of sight out of mind for a period of time I suppose I would consider it incumbent on whether it's political leaders leaders of civic society influencers in terms of how we engage people whether it's a business community to try and create a different approach towards prisoners because I think that's where it comes back to and I think people also have to take I suppose a bit of political and leadership responsibility to say if we think it's a good idea and we believe that prison should have the right to vote then we lead by challenging people with perceptions and negative stereotypes about those that we sent to prison that may not always be popular in terms of political return but certainly it didn't seem to damage any politicians popularity there may have been other reasons why they weren't returned to power but I don't think I didn't find any evidence to suggest that their voting record on whether prison should have the right had an impact on their electoral outcome. One final small follow-up if I may convene it just in terms of existing opposition within your jurisdictions we often think of victims organisations as being certainly people who have most to say against prisoner voting. Have the victims organisations in your countries played much of a role in this process? No. In terms of coming out against it I would say no. No it's the same in the Republic of Ireland today. Okay thank you. Just quickly a quick follow-up before I come back to Jamie, we talked about whether we do this on the length of sentence or the crime committed and I'm going to just throw this one out if the person was convicted of a crime of electoral fraud for instance or political dishonesty. Was there any discussion around whether that type of person should be denied the right to vote just because of the nature of the crime? No? Well when Quebec in 1979 decided to allow its provincial prisoners to vote they did say you know this they didn't apply it to prisoners who had violated the elections act but again I would go back to the many court decisions on this that have said that any ban on prisoner voting is unconstitutional, that it falls outside the remit of parliament to add the voting ban as part of their package of punishment options if you will. Dr Behan? Similarly I can understand why people would say that the punishment should fit the crime so if the crime is something which undermines the democratic process then an individual shouldn't participate in that but you could say that all crime undermines the democratic policy and the kind of social compact that binds us together and I suppose it comes back to the idea I think of when we look at this and when other jurisdictions look at it they a lot of time talk about the social contract and whether the social contract has been undermined by somebody committing a crime. What I tried to look at is the social compact. Instead of looking at it in a negative way of somebody breaking the social contract let's look at how the social compact binds us together as a community and how we can build more resilient communities where we work together and therefore one crime or another I don't think is appropriate to eliminate an individual who has committed that from voting. Thank you very much. Jimmy Greene. The convener stole my thunder. My question was very similar in nature but I'll ask it perhaps in a different way. I'll get the same answer yes and perhaps at the minute I probably missed declarations of interest. I should have stated that I am a Canadian citizen and I'm probably very proud of what Canada has achieved in this respect so I should put that on record. Is anyone in the panel where in any of the countries of jurisdictions where prisoner voting occurs? Are there any known exemptions to that? I think that the example of electoral fraud is an interesting one because if someone has in the wider public committed some form of electoral fraud or trying to perverse the course of electoral processes and is subsequently sent to prison as a direct result of that crime alone. Doesn't it seem odd perhaps that one would argue that they should then have the right to vote whilst that sentence has been played out and not when they come out of custody? I don't want to bring it back to the sentence versus crime argument because I think you either do it or you don't but are there any circumstances where it is appropriate to have exemptions for certain crimes? The other question is that if you were to run a poll in Ireland or Canada to state that the Government of the day had a proposal to remove prisoner voting that perhaps public would be up in arms about that and say that doesn't make any sense, that they've got the right at the moment, why would you take it away? In fact, because the Government's moved in that direction, they've taken the public with them and perceptions have actually shifted over the last decades or so. First, there is that argument that somebody, if they've committed a crime that directly relates to the activity that you're going to prevent them. There are some states where, for example, treason is considered a crime serious enough to deny somebody's right to vote. Challenging authority of the state are electoral frauds. One of the possibly most acute examples of where that was brought to the fore was that in 1995 Yitzhak Rabin was killed as he was coming away from a peace rally in Jerusalem by a man called Yegal Amir. Six months later, during the Israeli elections, the man who killed Yitzhak Rabin as the Prime Minister of Israel, the representative of the people of Israel, was allowed to vote in the election to his successor. He was brought to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court says that by denying him the right to vote undermines not just his right but the rights of all the community and the part of the democratic polity. I suppose that you couldn't get a more acute example of somebody undermining the democratic process and still being part of that as a result afterwards. You're speechless, Jamie. I'm repeating your question, unfortunately. My second point was around public perceptions and I wondered if you were not asking to pre-empt what one of these polls would result in, but if there was a proposal to take prisoner votes away that actually you would may find that perceptions had gone from negative to positive that comes back to the point that should politicians lead the conversation rather than react to what's popular in the public domain. I'm not sure of the question. Is it that you want us to try and guess what the Canadian population would think if the government came out tomorrow and said no more voting for prisoners? Exactly. That's a tough one. To surmise for an entire nation. I do and I think and I mean I just don't think this government today would do that but if they did you know my sincere hope would be that Canadians would stand up and go I'm sorry the government just doesn't have the right to decide to deny constitutional rights outright. They can certainly limit them if that's justified but to deny it outright I hope would anger Canadians. Saying is that it seems a big issue at the time because it's a change but once that change has occurred decades down the line it's just not thought about or discussed anymore it becomes a non-issue effect, hopefully. Jenny, last very quick supplementary question. I should declare the same interest as Jamie that I too am a Canadian citizen but in just keen to hear how your jurisdictions respond to extending the franchise in other areas. So for example we've battled for years and years and made quite a significant degree of progress of extending the franchise to 16 year olds. So for young people in particular is this a frontier that you guys have pushed back in both Canada and the Republic of Ireland? No that's never that that's not something that's come up when I first moved to Scotland I was you know really surprised that the franchise had been extended to 16 year olds. I will say that it it was really during the 1980s where we and up to 2002 where the franchise was extended so it was extended first to federal judges and then to prisoners but not to not to young voters now. So it's still 18 in Canada? It's still 18 in Canada. And in the Republic of Ireland I would say it's more around the practicalities of voting rather than the actually extending the franchise. So for example how do we encourage hard to reach groups to participate in the electoral process and does the National Literacy Association produce leaflets to in kind of accessible language for those who may have literacy difficulties? When do we had a lot of new arrivals in Ireland in 2004 when the European and local elections were taking place the department environment had information in Polish and Romanian languages to try and encourage them because they had the right to vote in local and European elections. I think it was in 1990s photographs were introduced on ballot papers in the Republic of Ireland. So I think it's about how to embrace the hard to reach groups rather than extending the franchise which I think if prisoners are enfranchised here they I think do become part of a hard to reach group and therefore there probably would need to be special measures to try and encourage them and engage with them. And I suppose move beyond the idea of a legal concept of enfranchisement to use it as engagement and empowerment and again it comes back to how we encourage that kind of civic engagement amongst prisoners. I want to see age of enfranchisement in Ireland. It's 18. 18 as well. Thank you. Okay I think we've exhausted our questions this morning. It just leaves it up to me to say give our grateful thanks from the committee for your evidence both written and a verbal this morning. It's been incredibly interesting. It's certainly informed our process going forward and I think we'll have a discussion about whether we should be going to visit a prison too so that was a great recommendation on your behalf but we're grateful and thank you so much for your evidence this morning. And as we move into agenda item 2 we are moving into private session. I'm suspending the meeting.