Introduction

This book began life as result of a two-day workshop in 2015 organised by the editors with the support of Irish Research Council funding to share knowledge on the rights of children with a parent in prison. The event was designed to focus attention on this marginalised group of children and to develop connections between those working in the area from an academic research perspective. Over the course of those meetings, a group of academics from a range of countries and disciplines shared research, reflections, and ideas about the significance of children’s rights in the context of parental imprisonment. At that point, issues raised by the incarceration of a family member were beginning to be noticed internationally through both practice and research, but little work had been developed that focused specifically on the potential that children’s rights could bring to the area. The development of a book that would focus specifically on children and their rights in the context of parental imprisonment provided a concrete focus for bringing such work together.