Brexit's impact on transfers of prisoners: A shift in balance between criminal policy objectives and individuals' rights?

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Through this fellowship I wish to establish thought leadership in the field of international cooperation in criminal justice, by investigating the impact of Brexit on international transfers of prisoners. The ultimate aim is to design a post-Brexit policy framework for UK authorities to guide the authorization and denial of prisoners' transfers.The UK hosts 9340 foreigner prisoners, and there are 5700 Britons detained abroad. For prisoners detained in a foreign country, rehabilitation can be more difficult since they may lack support networks (e.g., family and friends) and access to work and learning opportunities. To compensate for these challenges, prisoners convicted abroad can in some cases be transferred to their home country and allowed to complete their sentence there.Before Brexit, the UK could rely on EU Law as a legal basis for prisoner transfers back to EU States. After Brexit, the UK has to rely on international law. Interestingly, neither EU nor international law envisage a right to a transfer, and, controversially, both allow to transfer prisoners without their consent. Such a possibility has been subject to criticism on the basis that transferring prisoners without their consent actually hampers their rehabilitation and only supports 'emptying prisons', although no empirical study has verified this assumption. However, EU law in principle offered a higher level of individual rights protection than international law, through EU citizenship rights, and the EU charter of fundamental rights. Moreover, EU constitutional norms explicitly require balancing criminal policy objectives with individual rights. Still an extensive discussion is lacking on whether falling back on international law after Brexit, would actually imply a lowering of prisoners' rights, and a change in how these should be balanced against the states' criminal policy objectives.This fellowship would allow me to exhaustively investigate how much decision-making autonomy prisoners can and should enjoy in transfers proceedings and whether that changes after Brexit, from a multi-dimensional perspective which has eluded literature so far. I would compare what do EU law, international law, and UK domestic law prescribe in terms of criminal policy objectives that transfers should pursue; relevant prisoners' rights and interests; and how such criminal policy objectives and individual rights and interests should be balanced against one another. My approach will innovatively combine a theory-informed with an empirical methodology, investigating prisoners' preferences and legitimate interests in transfer proceedings, as well as the actual impact of forced and denied transfers on their rehabilitation. This fellowship would thereby allow me to expand my reputation and skills set beyond theoretical research on EU criminal Law and position myself as a leader in the field of international cooperation in criminal justice, thanks to a multidisciplinary legal and criminological approach, and to a broad lens looking at criminal justice, fundamental rights and constitutional aspects. To cement my academic leadership, I would act as co-director of the Durham Centre for Criminal Law and Justice and organise a series of expert workshops to lead a discussion and draft a Manifesto on the relevance and the future of EU Criminal Law Scholarship in the UK after Brexit. Further, I would organise a conference presenting the findings of the research targeted at different academic audience, where I want to expand my reputation, including UK public lawyers, criminal justice lawyers, and international cooperation experts. To establish myself as an academic point of reference among interested practitioners, I would lead an advisory group of practitioners (lawyers and HMPPS authorities in charge of transfers) and prisoners, which will give feedback on the research design and progress, and will have the opportunity to formally endorse the research findings.