Prisons and Human Rights

Dr Agnieszka Martynowicz, MA, LLM, PhD, AFHEA, has a combined academic background in law and criminology and her research and publications span both of those disciplines. She describes her journey…

My PhD (at Ulster University, 2017) examined the experiences of male Polish prisoners incarcerated in Northern Ireland, while my LLM in Human Rights Law Master’s thesis (Queen’s University Belfast, 2004) explored the rights and the position of victims before international criminal tribunals. In the past, I have written (often with colleagues) about youth justice, imprisonment, immigration detention and the rights and experiences of migrant workers. As a lawyer and a criminologist, I have always been interested in challenging inequality and injustice and I have been really privileged over the course of my career to use both campaigning and policy tools, as well as research, to work for change.

I’ve had an interest in prisons and punishment ever since I first taught a small group of male prisoners as a student in the 1990s, as part of the ‘Street Law’ project with the University of Warsaw. This experience opened my eyes to the world of prisons and its many contradictions, and I continued to take a keen interest in the issues surrounding detention – not just in prisons but also in police custody and immigration detention centres – ever since. Much of my work in this area was previously linked to work with human rights organisations such as the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in Belfast (NIHRC, 2005-2007) and Irish Penal Reform Trust in Dublin (IPRT, 2009-2010). When working for the latter as the Research and Policy Officer, I’ve had an opportunity to lead on research projects on prisoners’ reintegration post-sentence (with Martin Quigley), contribute to a report on international standards regulating detention of children (with Verona Ní Dhrisceoil), and to draft numerous briefings, policy papers and submissions to Government and national and international human rights bodies aimed at influencing policy and practice of imprisonment in Ireland. Since leaving IPRT in 2010, I continued my research relationship with the organisation as the Ireland expert on the EU-wide Prison Litigation Network (2015-2016) and as the co-author of a report on the use of solitary confinement in Irish prisons (with Dr Linda Moore, Ulster University) in 2018.

Alongside prison research and policy work, my other passion is migration research. As a migrant myself, this area of work is very close to my heart, and I strive to use this work to challenge the many myths that have surrounded public discourse regarding migration in both Britain and Ireland (and beyond!) for the last 20 years. The work I’ve undertaken in this area included reports on immigration detention and enforcement (with Dr Nazia Latif for NIHRC in 2009), the experiences and rights of migrant workers in Northern Ireland (with colleagues at the Institute of Conflict Research in Belfast in 2009 and later as an independent researcher for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in 2014) and the challenges of migrant integration in post-conflict societies (again, with the Institute for Conflict Research in 2009). Between 2012 and 2016, my interests in prisons and migration converged as I undertook my PhD research with Polish prisoners in Northern Ireland to investigate their experience of custody and the related experiences of the immigration system as they faced deportation (and sometimes extradition) due to their nationality and migration status. Since then, much of my research focused on the experiences of migrants who have come into contact with the criminal justice system and ‘forced mobility’ (that is being forcibly moved across borders) which is often the consequence. My specific focus has been on EU citizens, and I have been very privileged to co-edit a book on this topic with Professor Jose A. Brandariz (of University of A Coruna, Spain) and Professor Witold Klaus (of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland) published in the summer of 2023. Most recently, I have also written about the methodological and ethical implications of doing bi- and multi-lingual research in the migration research space (2024).  

Researching prisons and migration can be hard going, and not just because the research access to sites of confinement or the most hidden parts of the immigration system is often very controlled. Much of what we find as academics in those areas goes against the grain of public understanding and political discourse and can uncover uncomfortable truths about the treatment of those most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our societies. It can be hard to advocate for empathy for those who break the law, or who are at the centre of deportation practices. But I hope to keep trying.