Human rights and the ethics of compulsory prison labour

Compulsory prison labour raises profound moral and theoretical questions. This widespread legal practice (abolished in the Netherlands in 2021) jars with several established human rights, including freedom of occupation and unionization. Have offenders lost these human rights? Under which conditions, if any, is legally requiring prisoners to work morally permissible? This philosophical research project examines these contested questions from a human rights perspective. I develop a framework for how to theorize and morally evaluate curtailments of offenders’ labour human rights – and apply it to jurisprudence by the European Court of Human Rights upholding the legality of mandatory prison labour.