Network Publications

Roma and Travellers tend to be overrepresented in European prison populations. Roma individuals make up an estimated fifty percent of sentenced prisoners in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania; Travellers — though they make up 0.6 percent of Ireland’s general population—account for nearly twenty-five percent of the female prison population. Reasons for this over-representation include, among other … Read more

This Family Relations Good Practice Collection is the result of a two-year, multilateral cooperative project between the EuroPris Family Relations Expert Group and COPE on issues related to children of prisoners. The good practices within serve as recommendations, drawn from numerous European prison administrations, with a focus on improving the child’s experience in prison visiting … Read more

First published in 2006, this new edition of Children of Imprisoned Parents: European Perspectives on Good Practice reflects welcome change in awareness, knowledge and practice with respect to what is being done, and what can be done, to support the needs and rights of children with imprisoned parents. The publication, featuring a range of initiatives, … Read more

The European Commission sent out a call for submissions in 2011 for their Green Paper on the application of EU criminal justice legislation in the field of detention. The Green Paper contained 10 questions, and the Commission was interested in receiving feedback, comments and replies from practitioners, such as judges, prosecutors and lawyers and other … Read more

In Autumn 2013 we began an EU-funded project to compile a series of four newsletters focused on justice for children of prisoners. The themes of the newsletters were as follows: Prisons across Europe: National focuses on protocols relating to children of prisoners Prisons visits & families: Impacts, successes & struggles Police, judges & sentencing: Arrests, … Read more

In May 2011, Children of Prisoners Europe (at that time Eurochips) and the Danish Institute for Human Rights hosted an exhibition of children’s art on the theme of parental imprisonment, alongside specially commissioned, powerful sculptures by Mieke Vase, a Paris-based Dutch artist, in an open gallery space within the European Parliament. The exhibition helped draw … Read more

The Children of Prisoners: Interventions and Mitigations to Strengthen Mental Health (COPING) project is the Children of Prisoners Europe network’s major accomplishment to date. From January 2010 – 2012, the EU-research study co-founded by the EU Commission was a child-centred project, which investigated the resilience and vulnerability to mental health problems of children of imprisoned … Read more

Dr. Maria (Ria) Wolleswinkel’s “Children of Imprisoned Parents” is a fundamental text for COPE, providing a legal perspective imbued with psychological and social context. Dr. Wolleswinkel is Associate Professor of Women and Law at Maastricht University. She is a member of the university’s Department on Criminal Law and Criminology and Research School on Human Rights. … Read more