In a report published this week, the Joint Committee on Human Rights proposes urgent reform in four areas: data collection; sentencing; support for children; and pregnancy and maternity in prison. About 17,000 children each year―the exact number is not known―are separated from their mothers because of a prison sentence, the vast majority for non-violent offences. Those children are more likely than their peers to suffer mental ill health and addictions, commit offences, earn less as adults, stop education at a young age and die before the age of 65.
Human Rights Committee Chair Harriet Harman said: ‘The right of a child to family life is only given lip service when their mothers are sent to prison.
‘The harmful effects of a mother going to prison start at sentencing and continue for years, even after the mother is released. Judges can’t respect the human right of a child to family life if they don’t know the child exists. At the moment there is no guarantee that they have this information.’
The report, ‘The right to family life’, recommends that judges be obliged to make reasonable inquiries into whether the offender is the primary carer and, if so, not to sentence unless a pre-sentence report is available. It says judges must ensure they have sufficient information about the likely consequences of separation, including hearing from the child if appropriate, and must state how they have taken this information into account in their sentencing remarks.
Courts must also give full weight to the impact of sentencing on children, and this duty should be given statutory force, it says. Other recommendations were to give kinship carers financial and practical support, give financial help to families to allow children to visit their mothers in prison, and end the practice of making children’s visits to their mother part of the incentives and earned privileges scheme.
Children of imprisoned women who gave evidence to the inquiry included Georgia, who said: ‘I know my mum did wrong….but… we took a bigger punishment’.
