Thanks to the ongoing advocacy of Estonia’s Chancellor of Justice (CoJ), the rights of children with an imprisoned parent are gaining increased visibility in Estonia, reflected by important shifts in practice. Notably, strip-searching of children visiting prison is now banned in all three prisons in Estonia. The CoJ, the independent supervisor of basic principles of the Constitution of Estonia, has repeatedly called upon the Estonian Prison Service to ban this practice. The Tallinn Court of Appeal agreed with the CoJ, holding in February 2022 (in case No 3-21-161) that this procedure was unlawful. In its ruling, the court states: 

“. . . . being naked in a strange environment in the presence of a stranger greatly infringes a person’s right to self-determination. The intensity of the intrusion is increased by the fact that the applicant is a minor, in whose case it can be assumed that the intrusion into her private sphere is generally significantly more traumatic than in the case of an adult. (…) For minors, visiting a loved one in prison can be mentally difficult and confusing. Therefore, it can be assumed that the additional intrusion into their private sphere that comes with the (strip) search will have significant impact and potentially cause an emotional distress.”

Even after entry into force of the court ruling of 2022, the practice of strip-searching children continued. However, in the recently published ­‘Report on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’, the CoJ states that children are no longer strip-searched. While this is a significant milestone, the report also draws attention to other concerning practices that deny children their rights when visiting a parent in prison (e.g., the use of glass partitions that separate children from parents during visits; fees that families are required to pay for long-term visits) and calls upon Estonia to enact several key recommendations:

  • to acknowledge that children of imprisoned parents need to be seen and protected by the State;
  • to support relationships between children and their imprisoned parents;
  • to collect systematic information about children of imprisoned persons;
  • to create an environment for meetings between a child and their imprisoned parent which supports the child-parent relationship while, as a rule, allowing the child and the parent to meet without being separated by a glass partition;
  • to enable a child and their imprisoned parent to also communicate via video call;
  • to abolish the automatic ban on meetings with the child during disciplinary confinement;
  • to train officers dealing with children visiting their parent in prison
    (See paragraph 6.3).

The CoJ made several recommendations concerning family visits in another recent report on an inspection of Tartu Prison (e.g., calling for adequate training of prison officers in dealing with children visiting a parent in prison and allowing parents in prison to wear their own clothes when meeting with children). COPE celebrates these important advancements and supports the Estonian Chancellor of Justice in its continued defence of the rights of children impacted by parental imprisonment. COPE encourages those in the network and beyond to capitalise on the significant leverage these developments provide and cite them when advocating for change.