Freedoms are subjective to vary from place to place, rights such as voting on the other hand only a retard would oppose.
Question Time inside a prison
- Thread starter Zarlak
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Sure, all free men have the right to vote.
Prisoners aren't free men.
A retard wouldn't understand the issue, mind your language in this forum.
On the contrary, I think it's quite hypocritical to imprison a person based on them not abiding the laws of their democratic society, and at the same time forbid them from having any say in those laws or who governs them. In certain circumstance that'd actually be quite a dangerous practice.
Prisoners are removed of their freedom, but they still exist within the laws of society by virtue of the fact they're in prison serving a sentence, based on those laws. Based on that they should have a right to vote.
It's quite a common practice from what I know.
I don't believe that a majority of people would agree with that but then a lot of people have little to no sympathy for convicts. Of course it all depends on your nation's constitution or other like document but there certainly is a case for it as part of the rehabilitation process.
There's loads of examples of things that are common practice, which aren't necessarily right, and an endless list of things which are continiously up for debate.
I don't think you need to have sympathy with them. It's merely about their democratic rights. The right to vote isn't going to make your time in prison any more or less pleasant.
This would be interesting if the prisoners are political prisoners.
Presumably they'll just pick small time thieves and junkies.
Presumably they'll just pick small time thieves and junkies.
Saying that, I'm trying to think of a political prisoner in the UK.
Do prisoners lose all freedoms then?
In England, this seems to be one such thing, no?
Prisoners can vote in Canada, for some time now, too.
A lot of people believe you forfeit those rights when you commit a serious crime.
On the contrary, I think that removing that right makes you a non-entity in your society. I reckon that hurts, a lot.
I wouldn't know but it depends on the jurisdiction where you get locked up.
They lose a lot of them, that's for sure. Think about lockdown, cellblock searches, yard-hour, meal time. It's quite regimented. They're certainly not walking down to the corner store at 4pm on a Saturday.
And the ones who do really should re-think this whole prison lark.
Apparently so, otherwise it wouldn't be on Question Time (which I never watch because other people's points of view infuriate me)
and a lot of don't think you should forfeit those rights. I don't have too strong a leaning either way but I can see more logic in the arguments allowing them to vote than the arguments not allowing them to.
It might hurt some people, but it still wouldn't hurt nearly as much as being locked away from your own family, and forced to share a tiny room with some fat bloke called Biff, who sticks his cock up your arse every time you take a shower.
We don't send people to prison for being gay.
Yes, people should be sent to prison for breaking the law if that is the tariff unless you think it is OK to break all the laws you personally disagree with.
No, I haven't failed to see that laws get changed. I do believe that people who break the law have no right to set laws for others to obey when they refuse to do so themselves. That is not just and makes the law an ass. Furthermore I am not saying they can't ever vote again after release. Just during their incarceration.
We have had this argument before.
What the law needs is people to accept it and agree to abide by it even if you think it's wrong because we live in a democratic state and have the ability to influence/ change those laws we don't agree with.
So Mike. If there was a referendum on the age of consent do you think it would be a good idea to give convicted paedophiles votes from prison? You don't see the harm that campaigning for prisoner votes might do to the respect we show the process?
The ironic thing here is that none of us are being given a vote on this are we? I would accept introducing voting rights for prisoners if it was introduced as policy of a party who got elected. Or even if I was in a minority against it and it was on a referendum.
We've currently got a government and their policies, which a majority of people didn't vote for or want. If we're going down that route lets get that slightly fundamental part of it sorted before applying it to specific areas.
We just had a vote on that and sadly the people have spoken "the bastards".
That's a flaw of the parliamentary system, though, and first past the post electoral rules.
One could go as far as calling it democracy lite. We trust elected representatives to vote for us. Imagine a democracy where every potential bill/law was put to the people via a referendum.
One party very rarely gets over 50% of the vote. Even in the landslide 1997 victory Labour only got 43.2% of the vote.
People are sent to prison to protect society and to prevent it from degenerating.
You couldn't make it up, what if David Dimbleby is raped and murdered during the broadcast? which is almost inevitable.
Which is the point I was making.
It's not how our democracy works on any other circumstance, so why should that suddenly change in this instance?
Anyway, Brian's arrived so I'm leaving the thread before he says something outrageously right wing and winds me up.
It has happened in the past. Laws can be wrong.
Given that everyone lives under the law it is fair that everyone has a vote. If you say 'only those who obey the current law can vote' then that clearly biases against change. It's circular reasoning of the most basic kind and potentially dangerous for the state to exclude people from the democratic process.
You don't have the ability to change those laws if you lose your vote. You're again arguing from a position that the law cannot be unfair when their are countless examples in history of the opposite being true. The whole civil liberties argument exists because it is dangerous for the state to have too much power, such as determining which people are unfit to vote. If society has got to the stage with an issue that is closely run such that it is put to a referendum then yes, clearly everyone should have a vote.
You can think of no examples in history where people have been sent to prison for other reasons, such as political dominance or persecution?
Most of them are in prison because they're poor and stupid and often mentally ill.
The only thing that happened is that someone caught consuming (or in possession of consumer quantities, which vary from drug to drug but are nevertheless very small) won't be persecuted for it. You can't grow 9 plants of cannabis in Portugal, you can't even grow one, I don't know where you got that idea. The limit of possession for this drug is 10 individual doses, any more than that and you can go to jail for trafficking. I've heard of small time sellers in the possession of something like 100 euros of hash and that were convicted.
You're making Portugal look like a drugs paradise when it isn't. The only thing that happened is that now people like Heroin addicts are treated as sick people and not criminals, and I think that's a fair resolution that I'm surprised is no longer applied in other civilized countries. It's a public health measure above all.
...and for all them murders they done.
History isn't relevant to the matter of voting rights in contemporary Britain, prisoners don't have such rights now yet the ravens remain at the Tower.
80% of people in jail are there for crap stuff like fiddling their benefit or shoplifting. Whereas the directors of Railtrack, who caused seven deaths at Potter's Bar didn't even stand in the dock.
1. Of course laws can be wrong but giving people who are in prison for breaking them, the vote, doesn't strike me as a better way to make better laws. In fact if you want to set out to make really shit laws go with prisoner legislators. Let’s make the upper house prison work. That makes such sense I wonder why no one has thought to make our legal system based on the opinion of our criminals. Convicted criminals can't join the police or become judges. Is this a travesty of their human rights or common sense?It has happened in the past. Laws can be wrong.
Given that everyone lives under the law it is fair that everyone has a vote. If you say 'only those who obey the current law can vote' then that clearly biases against change. It's circular reasoning of the most basic kind and potentially dangerous for the state to exclude people from the democratic process.
If society has got to the stage with an issue that is closely run such that it is put to a referendum then yes, clearly everyone should have a vote.
2. You have this really stupid misconception that bad laws get changed by people in prison voting and that somehow giving them the vote would stop bad legislation, history says otherwise since those laws were changed without prisoner emancipation. It is only when the rest of society believes a law to be incorrect that it is changed. If anything knowing prisoners are against a specific law would probably harden public opinion against changing it.
3. LoL as you might prisoner votes changed none of the things you seem to think they did. Civil liberties don't arrive because of the sense of fair play of, and empowerment being given to, criminals. On the whole criminals who are in prison are not there because of their civic responsibility and giving them the vote denigrates democracy.
4. I bet the people who become victims of those criminals who we lock up because of the serious nature of those crimes, would really feel the human struggle against injustice had been enhanced by those very same criminals getting an equal say/vote in elections. Think it through Mike you are not crusading against an injustice in this debate. You are compounding one.
To sum up and answer the points in bold.
Everyone lives under the law only if they obey it and are subject to it. Clearly someone who breaks the law chooses not to live under it and someone outside that jurisdiction shouldn't be changing the laws for others inside it. Criminals don't live within the law they are being punished for that fact. So what moral authority do they have to set laws for everyone else?
I think none.
A Portuguese friend told me, apparently he exaggerated
Still my point remains, countries which have the tightest laws against drugs tend to fair the worse and those with more relaxed laws tend to fair better.