THE IMPACT OF PRISON ON THE HUMAN RIGHT TO MENTAL HEALTH PAPER PRESENTED ON 29 OCTOBER 2025 AT THE ‘BEYOND PRISON’

Abstract

This paper addresses the impact of prison on the right of prisoners and their families to enjoy their highest attainable standard of mental health. I argue that: Prison conditions - as they exist in most parts of the world - violate the human right of every person to enjoy the social conditions necessary to realise their highest attainable standard of mental health (i.e. the social determinants of mental health). They also violate the right to mental health of family members, especially children. The right to the social determinants of mental health is a justiciable right, which States are obligated to respect, protect, and fulfil under widely ratified international human rights treaties. A person’s right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of mental health does not disappear simply because they are in prison. Children’s rights to enjoy the highest attainable standard of mental health do not disappear because their father or mother is in prison.  The rights exist; but only in theory because they are not being fulfilled. Prison and the criminal justice system are a state responsibility. The risks to mental health posed by current prison conditions are well-known. The impact of parental imprisonment on children is well known. Yet States are rarely held to account for failure to address the impact of imprisonment on the right to mental health of prisoners and their families. To advance a more inclusive implementation of the right to health, international human rights monitoring bodies should require States to provide disaggregated data on the impact of imprisonment on enjoyment of the social determinants of mental health of prisoners, and their families, using criteria such as race, gender, age, income and neighbourhood. This data could be used by civil society as an additional argument in support of existing campaigns towards abolition1 (or radical change in the criminal justice system) and to further transformative change towards racial justice and equality in the enjoyment of the right to health.