There is a traditional view that the disenfranchisement of convicted prisoners is an apposite way to demonstrate that disobeying the laws of a society renders a person unfit to participate fully in that society.
That was the intention of the Forfeiture Act of 1870. The deliberate withdrawal of citizenship rights was a form of intentional dehumanisation, a Victorian version of civic death. That thinking was perpetuated in the 1983 Representation of the People Act.
