87.17IC United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners
(Amendment to 1985 Resolution presented to ICW)
Recognizing the long-standing concern of the International Council of Women and its National Councils with the humanization of criminal justice and the protection of human rights;
Recalling that thirty years have passed since the First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders adopted the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners;
Aware that changes have taken place in correctional policy and practice since the Rules were first adopted;
Believing that full implementation of the Rules is being impeded by a lack of expression of certain basic principles, the absence of which weakens the underlying rationale of the Rules and gives rise to divergence of interpretation;
Noting that, since the Rules were adopted in 1955, other United Nations Instruments for the protection of Human Rights have been given expression in concepts not fully reflected in the Rules;
Desiring to express the principles that have been missing from the Rules;
Desiring also to emphasize the balance that should be maintained, in the administration of prisons, between the protection of society and the equally fundamental aim of providing for the well-being and development of the individual prisoner as a human person;
Recommends to the International Council of Women support of an amendment to Part 1 of the Rules of General Application of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, through the addition of the following Basic principle:
- 6(3) Every person shall be regarded as having an intrinsic dignity and value in himself/herself, regardless of his/her condition and entirely apart from any institutional or social objectives he/she may serve;
- 6(4) Penal institutions shall have, as one of their essential purposes, at least equal in importance to any other purpose, the development of the individual human purpose.