Children, the Justice System & the Quakers

Yesterday I wrote about the interview on CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition with former Canadian General Romeo Dallaire about Rwanda, 25 years past. Well, here I go again with another segment from the same program.

The Quaker's have done a study of the children of those incarcerated by the Canadian justice system. They conclude that children are almost never considered when those convicted of crimes are sentenced and that pets get more consideration than kids. 


According to the 1989 United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children, including in courts of law. But when adults are sent to jail their children tend to be invisible. The lawyer with the Society of Friends who led the study, Verena Tan, says that "when we think about people who are being sentenced or incarcerated people ... we very rarely think about their families or their children." This affects the future of the children themselves, as well as women who are sentenced. While mothers are often principle caregivers and 70% of women in prison are parents there is little consideration given to these essential relationships.

As someone who did a chaplaincy internship in a federal prison I must admit that I never considered whether the inmates I worked with were parents. Ruth, my wife, had much more awareness of these issues, first as a crisis counsellor in a women's shelter, then as a court reporter in the justice system. 


Tan believes considering children's interests at sentencing could have far-reaching effects.
It's as though society is determined to stack the deck against children who live in poverty or distress. "These are children, and they will be people that we will interact with in our communities. What do we want in our communities?" she said. "We want people who are safe and healed. We don't want people who are struggling and facing a number of problems throughout their lives."

I applaud the Quakers for bringing this reality to light. Tan says her report, Considering the Best Interests of the Child When Sentencing Parents in Canada comes out of a long Quaker tradition of pushing for prison reform and prison abolition. The term "penitentiary" comes out that Quaker commitment to provide better prisons in the 19th century in which inmates might be reformed and "penitent" although their methods in that era were harsh by our standards today. 

Any comments about this hidden world?