Right to a Healthy Prison Environment: Health Care in Custody Under the Prism of Torture

Deprivation of adequate health care — including preventive and remedial therapies — violates State obligations under domestic and international law. Because it deprived inmates of a fundamental right it is appropriate to analyze the scope of that obligation under norms of international law that are binding as treaty law or as customary international law. Recent developments in international standards illuminate the scope of the State’s obligations to provide health care to persons deprived of liberty. Salient among those recent developments in the normative framework is the most recent version of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, amended in late 2015 and now known as the Nelson Mandela Rules.