Ask From Inside

Helping Voters in Prison

With the recent change in legislation around 2,000 prisoners serving sentences of less than 3 years have become eligible to vote in the 2020 General Election. This is in addition to the 3,400 remand prisoners who already retained their voting rights. Voters in prisons have limited access to information about party policies and no practical means of asking policy-related questions to inform their voting choices and encourage them to participate in the election.

To address this the NZ Howard League and the Department of Corrections have created Ask from Inside, a system that enables prisoners to lodge specific questions on election policies, which will be provided to registered parties, inviting them to provide a succinct response.

How it will work

Prisoners will be invited to write their questions on a form that will then be scanned and sent by prison staff to a Howard League email address. Howard League volunteers will then seek responses from political parties, collate the responses and forward them in an email back to the prisoner who asked the question. Questions and responses will be vetted to ensure no inappropriate information (such as prisoners’ names or personal details) is transmitted either way. The system will operate until 9 October.

How you can help

If you are going into prison to work with prisoners, please consider printing off some copies of the form and taking them with you to provide to prisoners you meet. Remember that there are two sides to the form, so it either means two sheets or (preferably) one two-sided sheet. Prison staff also have access to the form and posters to promote the scheme, but we can all help spread the word.

Note that for literacy or ESOL tutors, working through the form with your student could be a useful learning exercise in itself.

Download Question Form

Please remember to be absolutely neutral in how you discuss this with prisoners! It’s essential to avoid any bias for or against any political party. Not only would this breach the agreement the Howard League has with the Department of Corrections, it would also miss the point of the exercise, which is to encourage prisoners to seek out information and make up their own minds how to vote.

You’re welcome to pass the form onto other volunteers who go into prisons, but again please stress the need for neutrality.

If you have any questions, please contact us at volunteers@nzhowardleague.org.nz