The Research On The Legal Protection Of Prisoners' Social Rights

Prisoners do have social rights. It is an internal qualification as a subject of law as well as an embodiment of the essence of punishment. In establishing a harmonious socialism society, the protection of the prisoners' rights has important significance and it is also the inherent requirement of China's human rights development, the demand of meeting international human rights standards and the need of safeguarding a stable and harmonious society. At present, although gained lots of achievement in terms of guaranteeing prisoners' social rights, on the whole, we have to move further. Comparing to the entire country, prisoners as secondary citizens, are small in number, so their social rights can easily be overlooked. This paper will analyze and discuss starting from the prisoners'social security rights, labor and employment rights, educational and other social rights and in the end put forward some proposals on improving prisoners' social rights.This article consists of five parts. The first one is the introduction. The second is concerning the fundamental issues about legal protection of prisoners' social rights. The third aims to compare the prisoners' social rights legislation home and abroad. The fourth part looks into the situation and some problems on prisoners' social rights protection and the fifth to puts forward some proposals of legal institution on Chinese prisoners' social rights.In the first part, the author tries to introduce the background information, the research achievement from home and abroad, and the researching methods. Prisoners should have been entitled to enjoy social rights, which is a basic constitutional right for citizens, for themselves as citizens too. Social right is a crucial part of human rights. Therefore, to protect prisoners'social rights has significant practical effects. This thesis reveals the inadequacy of the researches from domestic and overseas by differentiating social rights, prisoners'rights, prisoners' social rights.In the second part, the author illustrates several fundamental issues about legal protection of prisoners'social rights. The prisoner mentioned in this essay is the concept of generalized prisoners, including both prisoners to serve his sentence in and out of prison. The prisoners' social rights in this paper mainly include the rights of social security, work, employment and education. As real living persons as well as citizens in a nation, prisoners are entitled to enjoy the social rights. Prisoners'enjoying the social rights indicates a kind of social equality in which the fruit of material civilization are shared. Moreover, having social rights is in line with the essential and valuable requirement of the humanitarianism. "To return good for evil" could not only settle down prisoners' heart, but also foster the social stability and harmony. It could offer an effective warranting system for prisoners to return to society, to reduce exclusion, to lessen and guard against crimes, strengthen social control and improve social civilization. On the point of economic and law, as a public product, social right needs the government to serve it initiatively and actively. To offer social rights to prisoners could increase the whole nation's welfare standard and decrease the cost of social management.In the third chapter, based on the prisoners' rights transformation, accompanied the historical change of the social rights, the author aims to offer us the historical change, the idea, the content, and the pattern of legislation on prisoners' social right separately. We could know from the history that the idea of protecting prisoners' right comes from abroad and it begins to spread in China only in modern time. From human rights to social rights, its scope becomes wider and wider. The protection level has been gradually increased too. However, it is important to legislate a right, which only can be performed by law.In the fourth chapter, it reveals the present status and main problems about prisoners' social security, education, labor and employment. Then it analyzes the low level of protection of prisoners' social rights on the point of view of politics, economy, culture, and law. It will lead to a crisis when the prisoners have no right to enjoy social security and medical security in and out of prison. Moreover, because of the imbalance on prisoners' educational right and obligation, their rights have been lowered, lower class of teaching quality with fewer teaching methods. The working right and working obligation are also unbalanced. There are so many restrictions on prisoners'employment in Chinese law. The prisoners' rights of working payment, rest, job, choosing, and working insurance need to be protected.In the last chapter, the author puts forward some proposals of legal institution on Chinese prisoners' social rights. Firstly, this paper suggests that we need to set forth three principles of prisoners' social rights, i.e. people oriented, reality based, and reasonably protected. Then, according to the present situation of prisoners' social security, education, work and employment, the author attempts to raise the suggestions about amending the prison act in order to preserve prisoners' equal social rights. Besides, some suggestions for judicial protection are listed, such as, exacting the law sternly, perfecting judicial redress, establishing prisoners'appealing institution, completing national compensation system in prison, and perfecting supervisal system in prison etc. At last, the author puts forward some proposals in related measures and systems, which include improving the standards of prison stuff, innovating management system of prison, widening the source of fund, and fortifying the prison's management transparency.