What do you think about when you hear the word incarcerated? Perhaps it conjures images of clanking cells and a parade of orange jumpsuits walking down a dimly lit hall. Maybe the word is viewed through the colorful prism of Hollywood movies, where the good guy always wins and the bad guy is sent to do his justified time in prison, as the credits soar across the screen. But do you ever associate the word incarcerated with family? With being a parent?
As the end of 2023, there were (in rounded numbers) 7,944 individuals serving sentences in Ontario’s provincial prisons,[1] 3,523 in Ontario’s federal institutions, and 12,667 in Canada’s federal correctional facilities across the country.[2] While this may seem like a small number in comparison to the total population of Canada, the lack of quantifiable data on the number of parents serving custodial sentences throughout Ontario (and Canada at large) is troubling.
The intersection of family law and the criminal justice system is glaringly apparent when one is faced with an incarcerated client who is attempting to either exercise parenting time with a child or re-establish parenting time with a child after being sentenced. In her 2022 report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Professor Else Knudsen identifies an underlying issue with respect to the law concerning parenting time between incarcerated parents and minor children:
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