ABSTRACT
This chapter considers briefly the views of some classic writers in the natural rights tradition, partly because they have been overlooked in recent discussions of prisoners' rights, and partly because of what can be learned from this source. It considers two issues presupposed by all recent discussions of prisoners' rights, namely, the fundamental assumption that punishment per se does not violate a convicted offender's rights, and the further assumption that imprisonment per se does not, either. Hobbes asserts that in a state of nature there is only one right, "a right of nature", according to which each person is at liberty "to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature. The chapter takes a concrete albeit hypothetical example of a prisoner's claim of right in order to see and to show how the dialectic unfolds in attacking and bolstering such a claim.
