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1 results

  • 7 - The Right to Rehabilitation

  • from Part II - The Positive Dimension
  • Sjors Ligthart, Utrecht University, Emma Dore-Horgan, University College Cork, Gerben Meynen, Utrecht University
  • Book:
    Minds, Freedoms and Rights
    Published online:
    21 December 2025
    Print publication:
    22 January 2026, pp 157-178
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  • Summary

    States are increasingly thought to have a duty to enable convicted persons’ rehabilitation, with some seeing this duty as grounded in convicted persons’ right to rehabilitation. This rights-based argument for rehabilitation emerged alongside the increase in rights litigation for carceral populations within the United States in the 1970s, and the contemporaneous development of the idea of imprisoned persons as “Rechtsburgers” or rights bearers in Europe.

    Admittedly, legal recognition of a right to rehabilitation is not universal. Many countries present rehabilitation as a “guiding concept” rather than a right that can be enforced against the state. The United States had also considered it necessary to re-emphasise the importance its criminal justice system attaches to the goals of retribution, deterrence and incapacitation, following their ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) – which highlights the need for rehabilitative treatment within prison settings in Article 10 ICCPR.