Lunch and Learn: Robin F. Hansen on "Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow"

Lunch and Learn returns with special guest Robin F. Hansen in conversation with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George's County Memorial Library System discussing her book, "Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow."

 

 

 

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.

Robin F. Hansen is an Associate Professor at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, where she teaches international law and human rights law. She is the author of Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow, (University of Regina Press, 2024) which examines the rights of newborn children not to be automatically separated from their mothers by the state without due process. She primarily researches how legal personhood is constructed within legal systems, and how this construction frames accountability. Her examination of legal personhood has led Professor Hansen to study systemic biases in law. Professor Hansen is interested in interdisciplinary scholarship, including analysis from systems theory and international political economy. Her work has been published in journals including the Modern Law Review, Global Jurist, and the Journal of Legal Education.