A scathing critique of the colonial legal system’s denial of children’s rights
One afternoon in 2016, law professor Robin Hansen receives a call. On the other end of the line is “Jacquie”—a pregnant Indigenous woman, nine weeks from her due date and terrified for the welfare of her unborn son. Jacquie has been sentenced to a custodial prison sentence and her son will be automatically separated from her immediately after his birth.
As Hansen works to help Jacquie with her appeal, she uncovers the legal system’s inherent discrimination against mothers in custody and the children born to them. Using Access to Information requests along with extensive research, Hansen examines the legal rights of these women—the majority of whom are Indigenous—and finds that Jacquie and her son are by no means alone: automatic mother-infant separation without due process remains the norm in most jurisdictions in Canada.
Prison Born calls attention to the colonial and gendered assumptions that continue to underpin the legal system—assumptions that so frequently lead to the violation of the rights and denial of personhood for children and their mothers.
Authors
- Pages
- 336
- Published in
- Canada
Table of Contents
- CONTENTS 7
- LIST OF TABLES 9
- INTRODUCTION 11
- OBSERVATIONS 27
- SENTENCING the NEWBORN 29
- AUTOMATIC SEPARATION in CANADA 45
- THEORY 59
- A SYSTEMS VIEW of the LEGAL SYSTEM 61
- SEEING the SAVAGE and the DYING 77
- The STANLEY ACQUITTAL 89
- ANALYSIS 107
- SpAtiAL 107
- The INSTRUMENTALIZED STEREOTYPE of the UNFIT INDIGENOUS MOTHER 109
- COURTS as the GATEWAY to INDIGENOUS OVER-INCARCERATION 121
- PRISON WASTELANDS and the REMOVAL of CHILDREN 157
- ANALYSIS 171
- LAW THROUGH the ANDROCENTRIC LENS 173
- FACTORS that BUFFER the LEGAL SYSTEM from CHANGE 189
- SOLUTIONS 199
- The ILLEGALITY of SHACKLING a PREGNANT PERSON in LABOUR 201
- HOW the LAW PROTECTS a NEWBORN from AUTOMATIC SEPARATION from THEIR MOTHER 221
- CONCLUSION 235
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 245
- CANADIAN FEDERAL PROVINCIALTERRITORIAL MINISTERS of JUSTICE 2023 247
- BIBLIOGRAPHY 249
- NOTES 291
- INDEX 329
