Throughout history people have been jailed for opposing the current view, and the current view then is one that very few advocate now. Drugs, mercy killing, leaking public interest information are just a few of currently politically contentious issues that see people in jail and the laws that put them there may well be abolished in time, their cause may later be seen as just.
A vote may be a miserably weak tool to give people, but it is better than nothing. My home town, birthplace of John Howard the prison reformer, could do with a councillor to speak for those in the prison and in the immigration centre. It might have prevented the immigration facility being burned down.
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