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I thought I understood the basics of the justice system. If a person commits a crime and the court finds them guilty, they go to prison. If a female prisoner gets pregnant before or after she is incarcerated, she should be taken to a local hospital for the birth and returned to prison. However, she should NOT raise her child in a prison. Right? Wrong.

Let's go back a bit. On my first day as a reporter, C was arrested and charged with murder. She told the court she was guilty and knew she would be sent to a penitentiary — most likely the Kingston Prison for Women. But the case was a test of sorts. Was it fair to send a woman prisoner so far from her home and family? The decision was no and C was eventually sent to Sask Pen.

Later, more convicted women were sent to Sask Pen and several of those women had babies while there. Conjugal visits allow prisoners and their spouses or partners to spend a weekend in a house trailer on the Pen property. Others have became pregnant in less formal arrangements.

Eventually, prisons and healing lodges for women were built across Canada and the women were transferred from Sask Pen.

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Now, the Correctional Service of Canada and some provincial correctional departments are considering allowing women who give birth while serving their sentence, to keep the child and raise it in the prison until its four years old. Being raised in a prison with cursing, swearing, drug use, violence and fighting is certainly more exciting than nursery school. Just Mom and baby, comfy in a prison cell with mayhem all around. This is wrong! Who is looking out for these children?

Supporters of the idea, maintain that this plan preserves bonding between mother and child. They also believe it helps the rest of the inmates rehabilitate. I don't believe that for a minute.

If you don't think there are plenty of drugs and alcohol in every prison, guess again. Should a baby be raised in places where more than a half of all female inmates are violent criminals and drugs are available to them? I say absolutely not!

What will the child learn of life, kept in a jail for four years, instead of interacting with other children and having freedom to be shown a myriad of different places and people on the outside. The vast majority of foster parents are good people who are trying to give the foster children a decent, stable home despite the horror stories we are fed. Isn't foster care, by far, the place for these babies?

This program has been tried in Canada before. At first, a dozen or more mothers took part. This year only one enrolled. Is it possible the plan was something to be taken advantage of at first, but now prisoners are not interested in keeping their children with them, nor do they seem to put a lot of weight on the issue of bonding with their baby? I wonder how many mothers kept their babies for the whole four years – and how much it will cost tax payers to help the children learn to live a normal, crime-free life?

I believe that as the twig is bent, so the tree grows. I also believe that whatever values you are going to teach a child, they will learn from you in their first five years.

A female inmate was convicted of viciously beating a woman to death. She has taken hostages several times in a penitentiary. One corrections officer had her hair set on fire and was threatened with a pair of scissors. This was done because the prisoner wanted a pizza. The officer was terrorized for hours for a pizza!

Imagine children living in the prison watching that. What would they learn? Violence is okay?
Hurting people is okay? Drugs and screaming and fighting are okay? That it is even better than watching television?

Imagine that woman raising a child in prison.