Precarious persons: Disenfranchising Australian prisoners

In 1998 the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters produced a report which, among other things, recommended that all prisoners be deprived of their voting rights in federal elections. The proposal was intended to have a 'deterrent effect', the reasoning being that the loss of a fundamental civil right would provide an effective disincentive to crime. Apart from having little, if any, deterrent value, the proposal is difficult to defend within the prevailing frameworks of liberal democracy, international law, and current thinking on criminology and penology. Rather, the aim of prisoner disenfranchisement is to visit dishonour upon the subject, a practice having its origins in the archaic concept of 'civil death'. The 'reform' is an eloquent symbol of a final disengagement from incarcerated people and a formal ratification of their status as non-persons.