Prisoner votes: A constituency of hard knocks?

When I was a student in Edinburgh, now and then a degreeless undergraduate Tory Boy, typically affecting the garb and manner of Mr Toad, would leap from his lilly-pad to scoff about what a spiffing idea it would be to reintroduce university constituencies. A form of plural voting, for years graduates of ancient universities were granted a double franchise and a pair of votes to cast, one through ordinary entitlements, another by dint of their degrees. Oxford and Cambridge boasted two university MPs apiece between 1603 and 1950, while between 1868 and 1918, Edinburgh teamed up with St Andrews to return an MP, Glasgow and Aberdeen lending the House of Commons another. After 1918, a single Combined Scottish Universities constituency was formed which sent no less than three parliamentarians down to London to represent the interests of their fellow MAs. After agitation for electoral reform, the university constituencies were finally abolished by the 1948 Representation of the People Act, the last  graduates' MP leaving with the Westminster General Election of 1950. Our Tory Boy, petit-bourgeois, gauche and defensive, thought this was a grand and witty sally, while his cronies from the mire croaked their approval. It was rather like watching the unholy genesis of Michael Forsyth. But I digress...

I wanted to discuss a couple of things on the outcry-provoking/scandalous/welcome (delete as preferred) decision to afford those in prison the right to vote in elections. As the Heresiarch has noted, in a piece in which he rummages through the European Court's jurisprudence for ways of avoiding granting the vote to all those imprisoned...

"The government's apparently reluctant surrender to the European Court of Human Rights on the issue of voting rights for prisoners has led to the usual unhelpful debate. Most noticeable has been the tangling together of two quite separate issues - whether or not giving votes to prisoners is a Good Thing, and whether or not the European Court of Human Rights (not, in this instance, the EU) has or should have the jurisdiction to impose its view on a supposedly sovereign Parliament. As is often the case, how one answers the first question tends to influence one's view of the latter; but they really are entirely distinct."

On this front, it may be of interest to note, as Love and Garbage reminded me yesterday, that the Scottish Registration Appeal Court decided as early as 2007, in the case of William Smith (Ap) v. K D Scott, Electoral Registration Officer, that to refuse to register a prisoner on the electoral roll was incompatible with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in Hirst (No. 2) v. United Kingdom.

Haunted by the hog's haunch phizog of this buttery Tory Boy, when the UK Government's decision filtered out I jestingly suggested that we should revive the style of university constituencies to cater for the electoral rights of our imprisoned fellow citizens. Folk seem particularly agitated by the idea that a massive concentration of incarcerated persons might be able to radically alter results in individual constituencies. How else could it work? Postal votes in prisoner's "home" seat? But what about the folk without settled residence, or who have been inside for so long they no longer have any strong connection to any other seat? That set my mind whirring and I pondered how plausible my daft suggestion for a prisoners' constituency might be.  After all, the "problem" can be defined in terms of (a) the lack of meaningful civic and political attachment to the prison's geographic constituency and (b) a dispersed population of prisoners who need to be connected in some practical way to conventional networks of communication which make our mass democracy possible. Surely the obvious off-piste solution is to borrow the university constituency model which operated without heed to geography, if the numbers stack up. I took a closer look.

Constituency sizes vary significantly across the country, but at present, 650 Westminster MPs represent constituencies numbering roughly 69,500 apiece, varying across the UK from 71,000 electors in England, 66,000 in Scotland, 56,500 in Wales and just over 63,000 in Northern Ireland.  Orkney and Shetland's electorate numbers a wee 32,181. Driven by Tory manifesto commitments to reduce the cost of politics, Westminster is currently considering reducing the number of House of Commons seats to 600 and as far as possible, equalising populations voting in each constituency to around 77,000. According to the latest prison population bulletin issued by the Ministry of Justice, on the 5th November 2010 English and Welsh jails held 85,269 people, 81,039 men and 4,230 women. Add the Scottish Prison Service's numbers to that - numbering around 8,000 - and you get to over 93,000 prison voters. Perhaps the newly enfranchised constituency could be split in two - sending two penal establishment MPs to Westminster. Or, as an incentive to politicians to the end purposeless imposition of short sentences, why not work towards lowering the prison population to the 77,000 cap proposed for other constituencies? Wise prison policy, as well as equalising and representative. Naturally, this expedient prompts some nationalistic qualms on my part, but consider the sociological interest of the arrangement! How the devil would they vote? Who would stand? Who would win? What sort of turnouts would the constituency secure, with nowt much else to do? Think of the hustings! Why be dull? Why not open up new and eccentric spaces in our democracy? BBC election nights could only be improved by the innovation...

Dimbleby: "I'm sorry to interrupt you there Mr Hague but now - Now, yes, I think we can have a result from Penal Constituencies, North..."

Returning Officer: "As the acting returning officer for HMP Barlinne, Shotts and Greenock, I hereby declare the votes cast as follows ... Tommy Sheridan..."