As part of the Annual Network Meeting held in June 2022 in Portugal, COPE hosted a workshop entitled ‘Training for Transitions’ that revolved around establishing ‘child checks’ and reducing violence for children during moments of key transition: the arrest, sentencing processes and pre-trial detention. Specifically, the establishment of policies and protocols that aim to promote child rights-based justice systems was discussed.
To set the framework of the workshop, a presentation was given displaying the varying levels of awareness amongst judges and magistrates on children with parents in prison in different European and EU countries. Mila Tashkova of Child and Space then spoke about a workshop involving judges in Bulgaria: ‘Overcoming Alienation: supporting children of parents, deprived of freedom in COVID pandemic’. The purpose of the workshop was to provide participating judges with an understanding of how best to support the relationship between parents in prison and their children.
Ewelina Startek spoke about the Polish experience of building a relationship with the judiciary, and how to encourage judges to consider alternatives to imprisonment in order to maintain the best interests of children. Participants heard from Paweł Jaros and Pawel Kaczor, both Polish judges, who discussed their experience of using the COPE toolkit for sentencers and how it impacted their practice. They highlighted the importance of approaching sentencers through a practice-based lens. As they noted, judges can be regarded as working like ‘craftsmen’, with a set of tools that assist the operational functions of the judiciary. One of the key pathways to centralising children’s rights during sentencing processes is to guide judges’ ability to use these tools; the sentencing toolkit proved to be a successful one.
