SoL Research Validation Seminar

A meeting to validate a study on Access to Justice for Women incarcerated with Children was recently held at the School of Law Boardroom. It attracted participation of the Academia, and members from the civil society as well as government agencies including the Uganda Prison services.

The seminar was aimed at establishing as to whether the research in its current form was in tandem with the existing situation in as far as the situation of women imprisoned with Children is concerned.

The study commissioned by the Public Interest Law Clinic is being conducted by Ms. Carol Adoch, a lecturer with the School of Law, with the objectives of determining and documenting the situation of mothers in incarceration with children in prisons, which should be a reflection of  their lives realities and access to justice challenges they face.

It is also aimed at identifying the challenges that mothers in incarceration face in order to better advocate for their better inclusion in the justice system and legislative reform. The study further seeks to find out the existing intervention models for the mothers and children and the lessons learnt that can be harness to enhance access to justice for mothers in incarceration, to examine and document best practices drawn from a comparative analysis with countries that share similar legal and judicial framework like Uganda a well as identifying the current actors working in the area of access to justice for women in incarceration with children.

The researchers presented for discussions, their draft report based on a study conducted between August 2016 and March 2017. It is based on literature review and visits to prisons and interviews conducted with inmates and prisons officials in Jinja, Luzira and Nakasongola prisons.  All available pregnant and women with children in each of the prisons visited were interviewed.