Parental Imprisonment and Children’s Rights

Aisling Parkes is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, University College Cork, Ireland. She specialises in researching and teaching in children’s rights, child law, international disability law and sports law. Her interdisciplinary research incorporates a range of areas which include the right of children to have their views respected. Fiona Donson is a Senior Lecturer in Law and the Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights in the School of Law, University College Cork, Ireland. She researches and teaches in the areas of penology, administrative and social justice, and children’s rights. Dr Donson and Dr Parkes have been researching together over the past decade to raise the profile of the rights of children with a parent or loved one in prison. They have actively sought to influence law and policy development in this area. In particular, their work has fed directly into the Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)5 of the Committee of Ministers to member States concerning children with imprisoned parents (2019). They have published and cited widely in this area in peer reviewed publications of an interdisciplinary nature.

1.Introduction 2.‘I just used to say "I haven’t got a Mum" because that was the best thing for me to say’: Exploring the lived experience of children with parents in prison 3.Living with the pains of confinement: the experiences of children with parents in prison in Northern Ireland 4.Making Children Visible: Children’s rights and their role in parent-child contact within the prison system 5.Children First: Putting the Rights of Children Visiting Prisons at the Heart of Policy and Practice 6.Starting Life in Prison: Reflections on the English and Irish contexts regarding pregnancy, birth, babies and new mothers in prison, through a children’s rights lens 7.Framing and Children’s Rights in Europe: Exploring policy processes for children with an incarcerated parent 8.Prisons, Families and Human Rights: From prisoners’ rights to the rights of prisoners’ children 9.Re-imagining the Paramountcy Principle 10.Sentencing Mothers: The Rights of the Child 11.Every Child Matters? Global Perspectives on Incarcerated Mothers and their Children