Final stages for Council of Europe Recommendation on Children of Prisoners

The Council for Penological Co-operation (PC-CP) of the Council of Europe has published the draft Recommendation on children with imprisoned parents. The draft Recommendation was presented during the 7th PC-CP Plenary meeting, 6-8 November 2017. It comes after months of work and collaboration between the PC-CP and COPE. The Recommendation acknowledges the challenges faced by … Read more

Launch of Volume 5 of the European Journal of Parental Imprisonment

Volume 5 of the European Journal of Parental Imprisonment (EJPI) is available online! This volume, entitled Making children count: Improving data collection for children with imprisoned parents, focuses on the importance of data collection and the manner in which data is collected and then used. The language used and ways of collecting data can affect … Read more

EuroPris Family Relations Expert Group: Good Practice Collection

The European Organisation of Prison and Correctional Services (EuroPris) Family Relations Expert Group has drafted a Good Practice Collection in cooperation with Children of Prisoners Europe (COPE). This Collection has come out of two years of fruitful exchange between Prison and Correctional Service representatives from eleven countries across Europe, along with COPE. The Collection covers … Read more

Short but Not Sweet: A Study Exploring the Impact of Short Custodial Sentences on Mothers and Their Children

Lucy Baldwin, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, De Montfort University, lbaldwin@dmu.ac.uk Rona Epstein, Research Assistant, Coventry University, r.epstein@coventry.ac.uk   ‘’It took a long time to readjust to all living together again. Everything changed in those few short weeks, … […] … it took a long time to feel normal again. I still get nightmares about not getting … Read more

CATS conference in Switzerland a positive experience for COPE delegation

For the first time, COPE was able to send a small delegation of children impacted by parental imprisonment to the Children as Actors for Transforming Society (CATS) Global Forum, in Caux, Switzerland. The week-long Forum’s theme of “Reaching for an inclusive world” offered children a “platform that inspires others to share their difficulties, to tackle … Read more

EU Agency for Fundamental Rights publishes report on immigration detention of children

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has recently published a report entitled “European legal and policy framework on immigration detention of children”. The deprivation of liberty of children remains a major fundamental rights challenge in the EU, and this report considers children’s rights to protection and care, and the principle of the best … Read more

Successful wrap for 2017 “Not my crime, still my sentence” campaign

The 2017 Children of Prisoners Europe (COPE) “Not my crime, still my sentence” campaign was very successful! Thanks to the motivation and work of members across the European Union, a variety of events and awareness-raising activities were organised throughout the month of June that featured the voices of children with a parent in prison. Promoting … Read more

Learning for Well-being and CATS

Can you help us send two children affected by parental imprisonment to a Global Forum on Inclusion in the Swiss mountains? We are pleased to have been welcomed into the Learning for Well-being (L4WB) community (formerly the Universal Education Foundation), following our Quality of Childhood session on children with imprisoned parents at the European Parliament … Read more