NCJ Number
229637
Date Published
2010
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This chapter discusses how human rights might provide an ethical foundation for youth justice, with attention to the work of the Council of Europe in setting standards and providing guidance on the implications of human rights for law, policy, and practice.
Abstract
There are three benefits in discussing the ethics of youth justice in the language of human rights. One benefit is that it casts the ethics of youth justice in recognizable, mainstream ethical terms. A second benefit in framing youth justice values in the language of human rights is that it invokes an international dimension. The third benefit is that human rights are capable of being interpreted in a court of law. This is not usually true of other ethical claims. There are, however, two limitations in making human rights the focus of ethics in youth justice policies. First, human rights tend to focus on extremes of abuses; for example, the rights of the European Convention prohibit torture, but this is hardly sufficient to define how youth are to be treated in the youth justice system. A second limitation is linked to the fact that rights are amenable to determination by a court. This means that the specific implementation of the general statement of a right can only be determined by a court. The work done by the Council of Europe in its promotion of human rights, however, is beginning to address this limitation. This chapter first explains the status and function of the Council of Europe, and then it describes the Council's attempts to enhance the ethical standards of youth justice across Europe. This includes an overview of the work of the Council's decisionmaking body, the Committee of Ministers, which adopted a recommendation on the European Rules for Juvenile Offenders Subject to Sanctions or Measures. 17 references