Human rights, the rule of law and democracy at the heart of European prisons and probation

Abstract

On 24 June 2024, Dirk van Zyl Smit gave the keynote speech at the Annual Council of Europe Conference of the Directors of Prison and Probation Services in Sofia, Bulgaria. In this extract, Van Zyl Smit asks what it means to place human rights, the rule of law, and democracy at the heart of two powerful institutions – prisons and probation. He explores potential tensions between the three ideals and considers how these tensions can best be handled in the context of prisons and probation. The same tensions exist in South Africa, where popular punitiveness is portrayed as the democratic will of the people and presented as if it is inevitably in conflict with constitutionally based human rights ideals. He concludes that such conflict is not inevitable.