Strategies for assuring the civil rights of detained persons: U.S. and International Perspectives

Persons detained by the state are at great, and sometimes, grave risk of harm which endangers their mental and physical health. This fact is universally recognized. It is enshrined locally in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and operationalized in internal review systems, legislatively created oversight bodies, and access of prisoners to Court intervention. The Council of Europe engages this issue regionally through its Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and locally through National Inspectorates and national preventive mechanisms. The United Nations has adopted multiple conventions, including the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment and its Optional Protocol, to protect detained persons throughout the world through encouraging the establishment of national preventive mechanisms and providing a system of international oversight.

Social Justice demands that we learn from the victories and, more importantly, from our failures to protect prisoners of the state. Our panel will review the structure of these interventions in Europe and in the United States and critically evaluate successes and failures over the past twenty years. Panelists will discuss the challenges of federalism in the implementation of national preventive mechanisms and of effective self-policing within government and politics, and the enlargement of the role of advocacy.