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(Photo: Bács-Kiskun County Remand Prison, Hungary 2022)
The Children of Prisoners expert group is about to finalise its activities. It started in 2019 as a follow-up of the Family Relations expert group which was run in 2016 – 2018. There was the need to start another group of experts focusing on the Recommendation on Children of Imprisoned Parents that was published by the Council of Europe (CoE) in 2018. The rationale for this group was to support member states in the implementation of this challenging Recommendation. As prisons and their staff is mainly focused on security, it seemed like a challenge to open up more for families and children supporting their perspective and needs. Training staff in this aspect is just one necessity to mention. Therefore, it was important to collect practices across Europe and provide guidelines on strengthening the rights of children, maintaining child-parent relations, supporting prisoners in their parenting role and help prisons to create child-friendly environments and visiting times.
With the contribution of Children of Prisoners Europe (COPE), it achieved content-rich and valuable results. The prominent outputs are: an Implementation Guidance Report which evolved out of four subgroups working on focused areas; an additional chapter will be published soon on Lessons learned during Covid. Also, a Data Collection Matrix with a country overview about counting the number of affected children. Furthermore, a Table of Recommendation with the progress and implementation status of each country per each article was created. Finally, a video on reflecting the recommendations to promote them was done as well as a video on data collection was provided.
On behalf of the EuroPris, we would like to thank COPE (Children of Prisoners Europe) for their active involvement in the work of the group. Also, thanks to all the Children of Prisoners expert group members from Ireland, Cyprus, Romania, Hungary, Norway, Belgium, Sweden and Scotland, (resigned experts: Slovakia, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Latvia) for your active commitment.
In 2019, the group has met for the first time for their Kick-off in Cork, Ireland preparing and agreeing on the work plan. In 2021, a workshop in Leiden, Netherlands was organised with valuable contributions by the experts. Recently, in 2022 an expert group meeting took place in Kecskemet, Hungary including a meeting with the Court and the Police, as well as a visit of a mother-child unit of the Kecskemet prison.
As a last note, we would like to invite all countries to contribute to the Table of Recommendations and the Matrix on Data Collection. The more information we can collect and share, the more valuable these tools will become. We hope you find this information useful and always very much welcome your feedback.
Justina Dzienko
Deputy Director of EuroPris
Coordinator of the Expert Group
Council of Europe Recommendation on Imprisoned Parents
An estimated 2 million children in Europe are affected by the imprisonment of a parent. That is more children than prisoners. Children of incarcerated parents belong to a high-risk group: They often grow up in problem settings and are exposed to multiple risk factors which affect them (psychological, physical, social, attachment, environment). Therefore, preventive work to support these vulnerable group of children is necessary. Due to several scientific studies, we know also that for imprisoned parents, family has a crime preventive function.
In 2018, the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation (click to view recommendation in your own language: CM/Rec(2018)5 – Children of prisoners) strengthening the rights of children of imprisoned parents. Member states are guided by these principles in their legislation, policies and practices. The 56 articles cover the following areas: Police detention, judicial orders and sentences; Conditions of imprisonment; Staff working with & for children and their imprisoned parents; Monitoring; Research and evaluation of child-friendly practices and policies; Media and with public opinion.
The recommendation is directed among others to the justice sector like correctional services and to agencies working for children. The need for cooperation was already identified. Other responsible ministries, authorities or organisations are also addressed in the recommendations:
Therefore, the last action of the group will be sending a letter on 20 November, World Children’s Day to all national responsible authorities to spread the content of the recommendation.
Dissemination seems necessary to close the interagency gaps and to work closer together. Cross-governmental and cross-disciplinary collaboration as well as cooperation between ministries, municipalities, youth welfare offices and NGO’s is needed as it is a task for the society as a whole.