USask Law prof's book nominated for three Sask Book Awards

Robin Hansen’s first book – Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow – has been nominated for three 2025 Saskatchewan Book Awards (SBA).

Hansen is an associate professor in the University of Saskatchewan College of Law (USask Law).

Prison Born was nominated in the following categories: First Book Award, City of Saskatoon Book Award, and the Scholarly Writing Award.

Published by the University of Regina Press, Prison Born is described by its publisher as “A scathing critique of the colonial legal system’s denial of children’s rights.”

“One afternoon in 2016, law professor Robin Hansen receives a call. On the other end of the line is “Jacquie”—a pregnant Indigenous woman, nine weeks from her due date and terrified for the welfare of her unborn son. Jacquie has been sentenced to a custodial prison sentence and her son will be automatically separated from her immediately after his birth.

“As Hansen works to help Jacquie with her appeal, she uncovers the legal system’s inherent discrimination against mothers in custody and the children born to them. Using Access to Information requests along with extensive research, Hansen examines the legal rights of these women—the majority of whom are Indigenous—and finds that Jacquie and her son are by no means alone: automatic mother-infant separation without due process remains the norm in most jurisdictions in Canada.”

The awards will be presented on Friday, May 9 at the 32nd Annual SBA Gala & Award Ceremony in Saskatoon.

Reviews of Prison Born:

"As Prison Born spotlights the need for procedural and systemic improvement, it challenges us as individuals to take off our own blindfolds.”

—Literary Review of Canada

“Hansen carefully and patiently walks readers through automatic [mother-infant] separation [in prison]...the writing is accessible and will appeal to readers...it provides a reformist approach, demanding that the law work to protect, not only to punish.”

—The Winnipeg Free Press

Excerpt:

“I would estimate that, every year, about forty-five newborns across Canada are unjustly removed from their mothers and denied the chance to bond with them, with profound effects on these children’s health and lives,” Hansen writes.

Read the full excerpt in the independent, non-profit magazine The Walrus.

USask Law Lecture Series

Hansen delivered a lecture in September 2024, part of the USask Law Lecture Series, touching on issues explored in Prison Born.