While prisoners lose certain liberties, they must never be denied basic human rights or stripped of their dignity, said the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Opening a two-day seminar on “The Human Rights of Prisoners”, Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the council, told the audience that imprisonment “never separates one from the love of God” and, “therefore, never separates one from his human dignity.”

The March 1-2 international seminar attracted more than 80 prisoner advocates, scholars and chaplains from some 30 countries to discuss how the Church could play a larger role in promoting and protecting the rights of prisoners and detainees.

The justice and peace council organised the event with the International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care, which helps religious and laity provide spiritual care and assistance to the prison community.

In a written message, Pope John Paul II said he hoped seminar participants would help “affirm the due respect, permanent human dignity of the individual who has broken the law.”

Cardinal Martino said “unfortunately, there are situations of imprisonment and modes of detention in the world which are even ‘prejuridical', meaning they still have not provided the basic protection of a person's rights.”

Some poorer countries or areas of conflict often do not provide prisoners their basic material needs such as clean water, proper sanitation or nutritious food. But even prisons in wealthier, “developed countries experience concrete situations of severe hardship,” the cardinal said.

While some forms of torture and ill treatment may have been kept out of public discourse before, some governments are now talking about “permissible methods and non-permissible methods” of extracting information from suspected terrorists, said Silvia Casale, president of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Casale said the way of thinking about the rights of terrorists changed after the Sept 11, 2001 , terrorist attacks on New York and Washington . Now “when governments talk about preventing terrorism, they talk sometimes about terrorists or suspected terrorists as if they were outside the laws protecting human rights,” she told Catholic News Service.

“If we start fighting violence with violence, then we have already lost the plot,” she said.

She said the Church can provide a counterbalance to the prevailing opinion that international human rights' law does not apply to terrorist suspects.

Andrew Rivas, policy adviser for the US bishops on criminal justice issues, said the US Church has to “be a little stronger” in speaking out against present and past human rights violations against detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

He said that after the most recent round of clergy sex abuse scandals began in 2002 US bishops were “in a difficult position to speak out on crime and criminal justice.” Now, there seems to be “a stronger effort to address the issues” advocating the rights of criminals, prisoners and detainees, he told CNS.

Christian Kuhn, president of the International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care, said the Church was well aware of the danger that criminal activity poses for society, but he said there were also other ways to deal with “antisocial behaviour other than immediately putting the person in jail.” People with mental health problems and drug addictions, for example, should be treated in appropriate facilities, which might not be prisons, he said.

Christians are called to welcome, respect and care for “the marginalised,” he told CNS.

Prison chaplains play a crucial role in protecting prisoners' rights and meeting their spiritual needs, participants said.

Dominican Sister Susan Van Baalen, chief of chaplains for the US Federal Bureau of Prisons, told CNS that, “the prison chaplain is the presence of the holy in a place that lacks holiness.”

Chaplains also seek to address the spiritual needs of correctional officers and wardens, she said.

Meeting those needs “makes a better day for the prisoner because if (staff members) are relieved of the stress and tension that comes with the job they don't take it out on the inmates.”

(CNS)