Analysis Opinion

#VotoPreso - A party where prisoners are not invited

Country with one of the highest incarceration rates in Latin America, the vote of the Chilean prison population can weigh heavily in the election...

Chileans are preparing to vote for the second round of the 2017 presidential elections this coming December 17. Country with one of the highest incarceration rates in Latin America, the vote of its prison population can weigh heavily in an election that is likely to be tight. However, the responsible authorities do not intend to install ballot boxes behind the bars, and this in spite of a recent decision of the Supreme Court that reaffirms that every person deprived of liberty retains the right to vote. The NGO Leasur is currently organizing an important mobilization to demand respect of this fundamental civic right. And they raise their voices to warn us that without political will, the right to vote is null.

Written by Diego Rochow, LEASUR investigator

Country's political and administrative authorities have failed to establish an electoral mechanism that allows voting access to persons who have been imprisoned but not deprived of their legal and constitutional right to vote

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LEASUR

Litigación Estructural para América del Sur (NGO)

LEASUR is a non-governmental organization, founded in Santiago de Chile in January 2014, dedicated to the defense and promotion of the rights of persons deprived of liberty from a critical perspective. Through strategic litigation, Leasur seeks to ensure justice and equality for the prison population and influence public policies in order to rationalize the use of prison in Chile.

In order to generate the necessary structural changes, the organization identifies and points out the patterns of systematic abuse that occur in prisons and undertakes political, judicial and administrative actions aimed at (1) punishing violation of rights of persons deprived of liberty, (2) create an institutional framework that effectively protects these rights and (3) rationalize the criteria for criminal prosecution.

Their website.