Abolishing Private Prisons in the United State: a Human Rights Assessment

This articles addresses the question of private prisons from the perspective of human rights and comes to the conclusion that private prisons should be abolished under the current circumstances.[1] This human rights approach is not based on religious and theological arguments (which, however, are powerful for those who share the corresponding religious and theological views[2]). Rather, it is of ethical-philosophical nature and grounded in the International Bill of Rights, which includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) and eight core conventions of the International Labor Organization. This International Bill of Rights constitutes the normative foundation of the UN Framework (2008) and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011) (cf. Enderle 2021). They contain 30 internationally recognized human rights and apply to all – public and private – business enterprises around the world. States have the duty to “protect” and “remedy” human rights while business enterprises are responsible to “respect” (independently from states) and “remedy” human rights (in collaboration with states). Most recently, the U.S. Department of State published the Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights (Report 2020), which reinforces the human rights incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.



[1]. It is an answer to the call for “Re-Learning the Human Rights Language” (Enderle 2020).


[2]. To refer to a few examples: Protestant Christianity (along with the civic republican ideal and classical liberalism) “contributed to the core conviction that government’s primary responsibility was to secure unalienable rights – that is, rights inherent in all persons” (U.S. Department of State [2020], 8; see Footnote 2). Pope John XXIII embraced and supported the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his 1963 Encyclical Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”; §§143-144). The Second Vatican Council highlighted the dignity and fundamental rights of the human person in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes (1965; especially §§12-22).