Abstract
Criminal offenders are sometimes required, by the institutions of criminal justice, to undergo medical interventions intended to promote rehabilitation. Ethical debate regarding this practice has largely proceeded on the assumption that medical interventions may only permissibly be administered to criminal offenders with their consent. In this article I challenge this assumption by suggesting that committing a crime might render one morally liable to certain forms of medical intervention. I then consider whether it is possible to respond persuasively to this challenge by invoking the right to bodily integrity. I argue that it is not.
Highlights
Criminal offenders are sometimes required, by the institutions of criminal justice, to undergo medical interventions intended to promote rehabilitation
Insofar as we find the imposition of minimal incarceration more acceptable than the imposition of an injection in such cases, this may reflect our much greater familiarity with incarceration than medical interventions within the realm of criminal justice
The difficulty with this more indirect approach, is that, when we look to cases in which criminal offending plays no role, it is difficult to find clear intuitive support for the view that rights to bodily integrity are more robust than rights to free movement and association
Summary
The aim of this article is to begin to challenge an assumption that has underpinned much of this debate. Two other goals sometimes attributed to incarceration— incapacitation and deterrence—are commonly thought to serve the same higher objective as rehabilitation: namely, the prevention of crime or, more generally, the maintenance of security It seems worth considering what would follow for the Consent Requirement if the goal of rehabilitation—or whatever higher goal rehabilitation serves—were sufficiently important that it could justify the nonconsensual imposition of minimal incarceration. In what follows I will consider whether it is possible to defend the Consent Requirement even on the assumption that the ultimate goal for which medical correctives are imposed is sufficiently important that it could justify nonconsensual minimal incarceration.
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