Judicial concepts of dignity and resistance to 'punitiveness': comparing the US and Europe

• In Event: Cross-National Analyses of Crime and Punishment

Abstract

The rights of prisoners developed under domestic and international human rights norms can and have played an important role in resisting ‘punitiveness’ within prison policy. Judicial decisions on prisoners' rights are a significant influence on the shaping and implementation of penal policy.

While this is so, there has been limited attention within the criminological academy given to how courts conceive of the rights of prisoners and the impact of those decisions on penal change.

This paper will compare how the concept of 'dignity' has been deployed by the US Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights as a mechanism to resist the use of very long sentences as well as severe overcrowding. The paper analyses these courts' understanding of dignity, and examines how their reasoning has important implications for the development of penal policy.

Author

• Mary Rogan, Dublin Institute of Technology