Children of mothers in prison and the right to family life: The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill Contents

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1The rights of children whose mothers are in prison

Our previous work

1.In 2019, the Joint Committee on Human Rights held an inquiry and reported on the right to a family life of children whose mothers are in prison.1 In 2020, we published our report into Human Rights and the Government’s response to COVID-19: children whose mothers are in prison.2

2.During these evidence sessions, and the subsequent reports, we have highlighted the plight of children whose parents are in prison. We heard from grandparents who had stepped in to care for their grandchildren when their daughters were imprisoned and heard from the children themselves about the effect that having a parent, especially a mother who is usually the main care-giver, in prison has on their own lives, and their own human rights. For the purposes of this report, we have drawn on earlier inquiries and evidence, to inform our proposed amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

3.This issue engages the right to family life, which is protected under Article 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is also important: Articles 2 (non-discrimination), 3 (best interests of the child), 12 (respect for the views of the child) and 20 (children deprived of family environment) are engaged by this issue.

4.While the pandemic shone a spotlight on the impact of the separation of children from their mothers in prison, these problems were not new.3 The 2019 inquiry and report called for fundamental changes in four areas:

• Prioritising data collection on the number of children whose mothers are in prison, including making this data collection mandatory;
• Increasing the visibility of children in the sentencing process;
• Increasing the support available for children whose mothers are in prison, including greater support to help them visit their mothers; and
• Ensuring that mothers and their babies are, wherever possible, not separated and that places are found, where appropriate, in Mother and Baby Units.4

As our country seeks to recover from the pandemic, we must now address the injustices it has so starkly highlighted. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is an opportunity for some of these areas to be addressed. We are in the process of undertaking legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and we will publish our views on the Bill in due course. In the following chapter we set out the problems relating to sentencing of mothers that should be addressed through amendments to the Bill, and our proposals to address these issues are contained in the annex to this report.