Whose Best Interest? Symposium Spotlights Children’s Rights in Criminal Justice Processes
Currently in Minnesota, one in six children has experienced a parent's incarceration. Despite international law demanding that institutions and legal systems consider the best interests of children, the voices of these children often go unheard when courts hand down sentencing decisions. This academic year, the Human Rights Program and partner organization Children of Incarcerated Caregivers (CIC) received a Liberal Arts Engagement Hub residency to focus on how legal systems violate children’s human rights by failing to consider their interests in the criminal legal process and how promising alternatives to parental incarceration can be implemented in Minnesota and beyond. With Hub support, HRP and CIC assembled a diverse community of passionate individuals to spearhead a year-long collaborative project encompassing weekly seminars and monthly workshops. Their work culminated in an end-of-year symposium to present policy interventions developed throughout the year to the greater community.
On Thursday, April 17, a group of policymakers, legal professionals, academics, and community members with lived experience presented innovative policies and practices to promote the wellbeing of youth with parents in the criminal-legal system at the Parental Incarceration and Children’s Rights Symposium. Dr. Ebony Ruhland, an associate professor at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice, delivered the keynote address. Dr. Ruhland’s research focuses on how criminal justice policies and practices impact individuals, families, and communities. Dr. Ruhland’s speech, titled, “I Wanna Talk to My Kids,” shed light on the statistics and community impact of parental incarceration and correctional control methods such as probationary and surveillance measures.
In her speech, Dr. Ruhland highlighted the impact of incarceration on families. “Trauma occurs at every stage of the criminal process, from the moment of arrest when police come in with warrants,” Dr. Ruhland explained. When a parent is incarcerated, children experience significant disruption to living arrangements and daily routines. They contend with the toll of maintaining contact with their parent, facing not only barriers to physical access but also emotional and economic obstacles. As a result, child-parent relationships often become strained. “When there are limits on tools of communication, it can be difficult to keep up with what your child is interested in,” Dr. Ruhland said, commenting on the hardships incarcerated parents face when trying to keep pace with their children’s growth and development. Evidence suggests that maintaining child-parent relationships helps reduce recidivism, but doing so comes with significant costs for families, including time, money, and resource expenditures. Potential measures to improve child-parent relationships include prioritizing an incarcerated parent’s placement near family and improving prison environments by creating child-friendly visitation spaces.
While the topic of parental incarceration often accompanies grim statistics such as increased risk for delinquency among youth whose parents are incarcerated, it is important to acknowledge the resiliency and strength that many children exhibit in the face of challenges. Communities and legal systems can take measures to promote such resiliency by strengthening children’s support systems and providing more outlets for children to engage with friends or express themselves creatively, which frequently translates into better outcomes. But ultimately, when considering how to best assist children, “it isn’t a one size fits all,” as Dr. Ruhland stresses. Experiences and impact will vary depending on the severity and stigma of the crime. Therefore, criminal legal systems and community initiatives can first work to prioritize resiliency and strength-based approaches. On the academic level, institutions can promote research that focuses on understudied aspects of the criminal system, such as the effects of correctional control.
In addition to the keynote speech, the symposium featured several breakout workshops and panels. Dr. Joshua Page, a professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Minnesota, led a panel about the consideration of parent-child relations during the criminal pre-trial process, while other panels discussed state-based alternatives to parental incarceration and the direct impacts on children whose parents are incarcerated. During this time, team members were able to present policy proposals for community feedback. Their policy suggestions included: adding questions about parenting responsibilities to bail evaluation forms so courts can understand the impact that decisions about pretrial detention will have on a defendant’s children; creating a parenting program or parenting track within the existing specialty court system in Minnesota; and creating a system for neutral persons, such as guardians ad litem, to represent the best interests of a defendant’s children when courts make sentencing decisions.
After the event, a reception with refreshments was held at Weisman Art Museum, where guests had a chance to take guided tours of the SEEN exhibition, curated by Emily Baxter, founder of We Are All Criminals. The SEEN exhibition features the art of currently incarcerated artists in collaboration with artists, activists, and academics in the Twin Cities community. The exhibition explores issues of incarceration, isolation, healing, and coming home, and is arranged across two galleries to evoke the experiences of “inside” (carceral) and “outside” (healing and community).
Through insightful speakers, workshops, and curated artwork, the Parental Incarceration and Children’s Rights Symposium centered important conversations about the effects of incarceration on affected individuals, communities, and families, showcasing the importance of humanizing those impacted by the justice system. Such an extensive project would not be possible without the grassroots efforts of students and policy team members, including UMN students, formerly incarcerated parents, adult children impacted by parental incarceration, representatives from local NGOS, members of the Department of Corrections, legislators, and a variety of legal professionals working in diverse areas of the criminal legal system. By considering the voices and experiences of the most vulnerable among us, their work shows us how we may construct fairer and more holistically-grounded criminal legal processes that not only recognize children’s rights but prioritize them.
