| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 科際整合法律學研究所 === 101 === What are the conditions of imprisonment entailed by the enjoyment of the right to health? This is the question to which this thesis aims to answer.
Articles 2 (the right to life) and 3 (prohibition of torture and degrading or inhuman treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the “Convention”) provide absolute protection for prisoners to their right to health in correctional facilities. The analysis of the cases of the European Court of Human Rights (the “Court”) in respect of the right to health of prisoners yields the finding that for a correctional facility to be considered acting in compliance with the Convention, prisoners within must have access to adequate food and water, proper and sanitary environment, and medical care.
The right to health is protected under Constitution of Republic of China (“R.O.C.”). Similarly, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (the “Two Covenants”), of which the human rights protection provisions have domestic legal status in R.O.C., provide non-discriminative protection for prisoners. It is indisputable that prisoners shall enjoy fundamental rights under the Two Covenants, including the right to health. This thesis argues that prisoners are indifferently entitled to the right to health as free citizens, therefore, the state must ensure the adequacy of the environmental and medical resources in correctional facilities to the extent that the health of prisoners does not deteriorate owing to the lack thereof. This thesis also argues that the standard of correctional health care should be the same as in the community.
More specifically, correctional facilities must provide adequate food and water, sanitary items and medical care, as well as keeping the environment clean and habitable. Old prisoners, female prisoners and prisoners with mental illness have higher medical needs than the general population, however, correctional facilities’ obligation to protect prisoners’ right to health, in times facing higher needs, remains unchanged. The prominent health issues among old prisoners are physical disability and chronic illness, and the needs arising accordingly require the correctional facility to provide barrier-free environments and long-term medical care. Female prisoners have distinct health needs as compared to male prisoners, correctional facilities should thus provide gender-specific health care to fulfill their distinct needs. Lastly, in-take screening, mental health treatment and suicide prevention are the core elements of health care of prisoners with mental illness, together they constitute correctional facilities’ obligation of health care towards mentally-ill prisoners.
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