Imprisonment and Meaningful Work: A Framework for Habilitation

Imprisonment and Meaningful Work: A Framework for Habilitation

Speaker: Dr. Hadassa Noorda, Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam

Chair: Kevin Toh, Professor of Philosophy, UCL Laws 

About this talk

In this paper, Dr Noorda develops a framework for considering prison labor based on societal inclusion and argue for a standard of meaningful work in prison. This may seem counterintuitive, as scholars have predominantly approached the objective of prison labor from a retributive, consequentialist, or rehabilitative perspective. These theories of criminal law address justifications for states to deprive subordinates of their ability to participate in society and requirements for states to rehabilitate and reintegrate those who have served their sentences. However, the majority of offenders have never played a meaningful part in the society to which a rehabilitation program seeks to reintegrate them. Before they ended up in prison, many offenders lacked the opportunities to acquire capacities, relationships, and access to the job market that would have helped them play a meaningful role in society. In cases such as these, imprisonment affects people who are already excluded from key aspects of society. This paper considers prison labor through an alternative view of criminal law: habilitationism. In a nutshell, habilitationism advocates that punishment should enhance an individual’s ability to participate in society. On this view, offenders should not be excluded from society; rather, they are entitled to participation in society as much as—if not more than—other people. For working prisoners, this means that they ought to have meaningful work options in prison to enhance their ability to participate in society.

About the speaker

Dr. Hadassa Noorda is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam and serves on the organizing committee of the Legal Philosophy Workshop. Specializing in the philosophy of law, her primary research interests lie in criminal law theory. Dr. Noorda holds degrees in both law and philosophy from the University of Amsterdam and Columbia University (LL.B., LL.M., BA, MA, PhD). She has held several postdoctoral positions, including the Dworkin Balzan Fellowship and Global Hauser Fellowship at NYU, a research fellowship at Columbia Law School, and a Rubicon Fellowship at the University of Amsterdam and Rutgers’ Institute for Law and Philosophy, supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). In 2023-2024, she was a GAK Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS).

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