These general remarks suggest two spheres (or focal points) for applications of the principle of respect for human dignity. First, there is the idea that those who have the relevant dignity-related capacity (for instance, the capacity for autonomous action) have the right to be recognized as such (that is to say, if the capacity for autonomous action is the relevant capacity, then respect for dignity demands that those who have such a capacity are treated as beings with autonomous personalities). Even where offenders are deprived of their liberty following the commission of a crime, they do not lose their inherent dignity and, by implication, their membership of a community of rights; thus, they retain the right to be recognized as autonomous (or, at any rate, as having the capacity for autonomous action). In the same vein, persons must not be made ‘the mere object of the state’. Notwithstanding their commission of on offence, offenders are not to be treated as mere, objects, or things; they remain ends in their own right by virtue of their capacity to control and take responsibility for their actions. As the Court elaborates this idea, because the dignity of the human person is inviolable, punishments must be proportional to the severity of the offence and the guilt of the offender; which is to say, those offenders who are deprived of their liberty should not be made ‘the mere object of crime prevention’. Second, there is the idea that human have a right to the conditions or circumstances in which they can exercise their dignity-related capacities fully—in which, for example, their autonomous personalities can flourish.According to the Court, it follows that cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishments are strictly prohibited by the ‘commandment of human dignity’: and, in the more recent Honecker Decision, the Court suggested that human dignity is violated where an individual is ‘degraded to a mere object of state action’ by being kept in custody when he is seriously ill and close to death. Although this latter suggestion was controversial, the deeper idea that human dignity is violated where persons are subjected to conditions that are demeaning or degrading is commonly relied on—not merely in the context of deprivation of liberty, but also in relation to housing and employment conditions.