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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Colin MurrayORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2021.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Between late 2017 and 2018 the United Kingdom and the Council of Europe called a truce over prisoner voting rights, and almost no one noticed. No bells rang out, no triumphal debate took place in Westminster. All protagonists had long since exhausted their energies or, at least, turned their attentions to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. This article evaluates the “Lidington Compromise”, by which the UK Government moved to enfranchise day-release prisoners, alongside Scottish and Welsh Parliaments opening up new aspects of the confrontation by moving to enfranchise some prisoners on the basis of sentence length. It assesses the significance of these moves in the context of devolution. It also examines how these different approaches to resolving the prisoner voting issue square with the Strasbourg Court’s jurisprudence and the extent to which different understandings of democratic rights now prevail across the United Kingdom.
Author(s): Murray C
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Edinburgh Law Review
Year: 2021
Volume: 25
Issue: 3
Pages: 291-314
Online publication date: 01/09/2021
Acceptance date: 31/03/2021
Date deposited: 22/04/2021
ISSN (print): 1364-9809
ISSN (electronic): 1755-1692
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.3366/elr.2021.0713
DOI: 10.3366/elr.2021.0713
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