ILR

International Labour Review

0020-7780 1564-913X

10.1111/ilr.12399

Prison labour, customs preference schemes and decent work: Critical analysis and outlook

SITZIA

Andrea

andrea.sitzia@unipd.it LOPEZ

Benoît

lopezbenoit1@gmail.com

Department of Political Science, Law, and International Studies of the University of Padua University of Versailles Saint‐Quentin‐en‐Yvelines, Université Paris‐Saclay

02 06 2023

162 2

10.1111/ilr.v162.2

305 326

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In customs preference schemes, prison labour is primarily viewed as unfair competition, to be rejected out of hand. This form of employment can, however, be understood differently, notably by considering the conditions under which it may constitute decent work, and by seeing it as a tool for rehabilitation. Following an in‐depth legal analysis, in which they compare the relevant standards of the ILO to EU and WTO customs regulations in the light of the capability approach, the authors call for the development of a set of rules drawing on several branches of law relating to prison labour.

prison labour decent work unfair competition tariff policy ILO standards European law vulnerable groups capability approach EU WTO

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