Right to rehabilitation

We often think about victims' rights and restorative justice, but how many of us think about offenders' rights and their re-integration into the society? In our society, the images of the offenders are not positive at all. They are ignorant, isolated and treated as bad people even after spending the punishment given by the court. However, in criminology, there is a scope to think about it and this is called 'rehabilitation'. Rehabilitation is a process where a convicted person could be re-integrated into the society. Perhaps, it is the main objective of the modern penal policy and correctional system. Through the process of rehabilitation, individuals can return to a crime free lifestyle. In addition, it is possible to reduce recidivism by taking care of various factors of the offenders. 

Rehabilitation is not the purpose of imprisonment but it is a goal of corrections as a whole. Given the fact, it pursues to minimize the destructive side-effects of state retributive intervention. In that sense, rehabilitation process is not only the interest of our society but also constitutes a right of the offender. It is a right that includes a minimum standard of seriousness and quality in the performed services.

However, right to rehabilitation is not a constitutional right in most of the countries. Although based on “equal protection” theory, it can be a constitutional right. A prisoner could be a criminal but still he holds some civil rights like the other citizens have. In addition, right to rehabilitation could be viewed as a right to minimum protection.

However, it is sad to say that most of the countries deny recognising rehabilitation as a human right. In Bangladesh, prisoners are isolated from the society because of their crimes.  The government has no active role to support them to live with crime free life. As a result they are being motivated to commit the crime again and again.

Some countries are recognising rehabilitation as a human right, for an example, Section 3553(a) of the United States Code states that “imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation”. In Europe, the Council of Europe committee of minister have incorporated a crime policy that aimed at crime prevention and the social restoration of offenders.

The European Court of Human Rights stated in various judgments that, “while punishment remains one of the aims of imprisonment, the emphasis in European penal policy is now on the rehabilitative aim of imprisonment, particularly towards the end of a long prison sentence”. In Germany, it is a constitutional basic right of the German people. Article 2(2) of the German Constitution states that, “everyone has the right to life and to inviolability of his person. The freedom of the individual is inviolable. These rights may be encroached upon only pursuant to a law.” Article 27 of the Italian Constitution states that, “punishment cannot consist in treatment contrary to human dignity and must aim at rehabilitating the condemned.”

Unfortunately, rehabilitation process does not exist in Bangladesh. Although the Constitution of Bangladesh says about equal protection of the citizens but it doesn't apply for the offenders.

MD MUSTAKIMUR RAHMAN
Legal Research Assistant at Bangladesh Institute of Law And International Affairs (BILIA)