The issue of some prisoners voting in the UK has caused a lot of controversy over the past week or so. In a European court ruling it has been decided to give prisoners voting rights under article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1988. Some of what has been said about the issue has been total tosh. But below is a quote from a blog I found last week. It is written by Craig Lawrence Roters and though not specifically on prisoners voting it gives a Christian perspective on the very thorny issue of how we treat our prisoners in general.

The value, quality and depth of a civilisation is measured not merely by how it treats its children, its elderly or its sick, but how it treats its criminals.  To protect the vulnerable and the defenceless is natural and instinctive – but to plead for the dignity of an outlaw goes against the grain.  In our attitudes to the criminal, the darkest, most primitive aspects of our nature come forward.

Bubbling just below the surface of a seemingly modern, civilised society are those powerful, uncontrollable yearnings for revenge.

For blood.

Scratch the surface and we see that very little has changed in two thousand years.  We can be just as cruel and barbaric as the Romans.

But in the crucifixion God has entered the darkest and bleakest corners of human existence, a corner so dark that it barely remains human.  Executioner and victim alike are robbed of their human dignity – subject to dehumanising forces.  Forces that deny that God-willed communion between all human beings; forces that attempt to blot out the image of the divine – so a criminal becomes a problem to be solved, a statistic to mange, but not a person to be redeemed.

Any thoughts?