Shona Minson, a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford and a COPE member since 2014, has released her book Maternal Sentencing and the Rights of the Child at a crucial moment when awareness of children with imprisoned parents is reaching critical mass in some European contexts. Drawing on her experience practicing criminal and family law, and on her research and advocacy surrounding guidelines for child-aware sentencing in England & Wales, Minson challenges what Adele Jones (2017) named ‘child blind justice’—where the harm inflicted on a child as a result of sentencing decisions for primary carers is neither foreseen, acknowledged nor remedied by the system.
By spotlighting the experiences of children separated from their imprisoned mothers, and documenting caregivers’ court testimonials, Minson sensitively inquires into the jarring lack of consideration of children’s rights when the sentencing of a mother or primary carer can mean a difficult and often disruptive separation between mother and child. What does such a lack of consideration reveal about the nature of criminal proceedings? Why, for instance, are children facing separation in this context treated differently in relation to those at the centre of family court deliberations? Does this divergent treatment represent ‘discrimination or punishment’?
At the heart of these inquiries is the tension between national court proceedings and international statutes on children’s rights. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has enshrined the best interest of a defendant’s child as a consideration to be ‘carefully weighed and taken into account in all decisions related to detention, including pre-trial detention and sentencing, and decisions concerning the placement of the child’. Along with the 2018 Council of Europe Recommendation concerning children with imprisoned parents, the UNCRC also emphasises that alternatives to imprisonment should be considered to safeguard children’s best interests. Maternal Sentencing and the Rights of the Child is squarely situated in conversation with these international documents, and begs to know why action based on these considerations and principles continues to come up short for children of defendants facing separation from their primary carer.
With its powerful look at children’s rights in adult sentencing processes, children’s accounts of their experiences of maternal incarceration, and insights into judicial thinking, Minson’s book is unique in its innovation, scope and clout as it tackles these questions and those raised above. The book will be relevant to academic and practitioner audiences across criminology, social work, child rights, law and social policy—and it provides a valuable impetus for the Children of Prisoners Europe network to make further inroads in advocacy on the importance of child-sensitive sentencing processes and the application of imprisonment as a measure only as a last resort, thus fostering truly preventive action for children across Europe.