Risk reduction and redemption : an interpretive account of the right to rehabilitation in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

This article offers new insights into ECtHR jurisprudence that recognises a right to rehabilitation for prisoners but also recognises a nebulous ‘right to security’ on behalf of the public that threatens to undermine its commitments to prisoners’ rights. It distinguishes two distinct concepts of rehabilitation underpinning the ECtHR’s jurisprudence: rehabilitation as risk reduction and rehabilitation as redemption. The first is shaped by a modern preoccupation with identifying and eliminating risk factors for offending. The second reflects the idea that offending is a sign of bad character but that people can atone for their crimes and mend their ways by working hard to change themselves. The article concludes that the ECtHR, by placing the onus on life-sentenced prisoners to demonstrate they have achieved rehabilitation in order to earn release from prison, risks entrenching the trends of popular punitiveness and precautionary penal warehousing that it has sought to oppose.