Embracing and Resisting Prisoner Enfranchisement: A Comparative Analysis of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom

This paper examines prisoner enfranchisement in the Republic of Ireland and United Kingdom. Despite being close neighbours, having similar legal and political traditions, both being members of the Council of Europe and European Union, and latterly politicians tending towards similar rhetoric on ‘law and order’, the debates and outcome in the two states have been significantly different on prisoner enfranchisement. The paper considers why the two states took such diverging approaches. Not only did the attitudes of governments and legislators differ on prisoner enfranchisement, but the debates revealed variance in portrayal of prisoners. Media interest was very different in the two states and discussions over parliamentary sovereignty, European influences, and judicial activism were central to the outcome of the deliberations on prisoner enfranchisement.