Prison Visitors: Coronavirus

(asked on 14th July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what his policy is on children visiting their mothers in prison on a socially distanced basis where it is safe for them to do so.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 20th July 2020

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) recognises the importance and positive impact that can benefit children and families by visiting offenders in prison. The decision to stop visits was based on public health advice and mirrored the restrictions faced by the whole country, we know the difficult impact this has on mothers in prison and it was not taken lightly.

As a result of the success of these measures, we are now formulating plans for how these restrictions can be cautiously rolled back over the coming weeks and months. We have now reintroduced family visits at some establishments housing female offenders and plan to reintroduce them to the remainder of the female estate over the coming weeks. Currently a single adult visiting can be accompanied by up to two children, but if two adults visits only one child may accompany them. All visitors must live together in the same household except for parents of a prisoner who live apart. Guidance on visiting someone in prison during the pandemic is published on GOV.UK at the following link;

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/visit-someone-in-prison-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic

We are conscious of the impact that these restrictions have on prisoners’ wellbeing and rehabilitation. Taking into consideration the recommendations made in the 2017 Farmer Review and the 2019 Farmer Review for Women, we have invested in various measures to maintain family contact and improve wellbeing. We have provided additional pin credit for phone calls, distributed locked mobile phones for establishments without access to in-cell telephony and deployed new video call technology at all women’s prisons.

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