ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to demonstrate how the construction of prisoners' rights in news media operates. The media representation of prisoners' rights is inexorably linked to the representation of crime and punishment more broadly. The chapter looks at the considerably larger issue of prisoner's rights to vote. In the media environment, it is perhaps unsurprising that prisoners' rights are either ignored or recontextualised. They are subsumed into a construction of the prisoner as high risk, dangerous and beyond redemption. Long-standing precedent set by the European Court of Human Rights upholds that certain sections of society, including convicted prisoners, can be excluded from voting. The undeserving dangerous prisoner seeking to enforce their rights in a soft touch prison system is a dominant theme of prison stories in the British press. The manner in which prison and prisoners are constructed by the British media plays a crucial role in public comprehension of prisoners' rights.
