Maternal imprisonment across borders

Maternal imprisonment across borders

Wednesday 10 November 2021 | 16:30 - 17:30

This seminar will consider the separation of mothers and young children, as a result of legal proceedings.

Dr Shona Minson is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford and author of the book Maternal Sentencing and the Rights of the Child. Her most recent research focused on the experiences of children whose parents were in prison during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown. She has a particular interest in sentencing, and her ESRC funded research on the rights of children when mothers are sentenced has influenced judicial practice and government policy.

Naomi Jackson, from Social Workers Without Borders, will speak about her work in undertaking assessments of families for use in court proceedings including Best Interests and Human Rights Assessments where individuals are facing detention, removal or deportation.

Ben Cooper QC will address protections against the separation of parents and young children in the context of extradition and domestic criminal proceedings. Ben is co-leader of the Doughty Street Extradition team. He challenged the exceptionality test in Jaso v Spain drawing on immigration law and was counsel for the successful appellant, FK, and her five children, in HH v Italy. The case transformed the approach of the courts when faced with the Article 8 ECHR rights of dependent children to remain with parents facing extradition and the family life rights of all facing extradition.

Camila Zapata Besso will be looking at the separation of parents from young children in the UK as a result of immigration detention, removal and deportation, and the Court of Appeal’s recent jurisprudence on how the Article 8 ECHR assessment should be conducted in these contexts. Camila is an immigration specialist regularly instructed to appear in the First-tier and Upper Tribunals in complex asylum, human rights and deportation appeals for vulnerable adults and children, and in High Court JR challenges to detention and removal. She is developing a practice in asylum claims involving national security issues and concurrent extradition proceedings.

The seminar will be chaired by Amelia Nice. Amelia is a barrister specialising in extradition, human rights and public law, and is ranked in Chambers and Partners as a leader in the field of Extradition at the London Bar. The majority of her work involves human rights related arguments and she has particular expertise in cases concerning children’s rights. She also has a track record running cases overlapping with care proceedings, child abduction and trafficking and her practice includes international children work.

The seminar will assist practitioners prepare for domestic and international proceedings to ensure their courts have the best evidence and approach to safeguarding against the impact of separation.

There will be live auto-transcription enabled throughout this event and it will be recorded. All guests will have their cameras and microphones turned off automatically for this event. Exclusionary language will not be accepted.

The audio transcript will be made available on request.

Unfortunately, we will be unable to provide a BSL interpreter for this event.

Please let us know if you would like to engage in a confidential conversation regarding this or if you have any other accessibility requirements at: events@doughtystreet.co.uk.

Slides are available here.