Serving time with Mom in prison: cruel sentence, or a child's right?

From the pint-sized toilets to the colorful bedrooms and backyard filled with overturned tricycles, there’s no question children live here.

What’s less obvious is that the 38 babies and toddlers bunking with their mothers at the Vilma Curling Rivera Institutional Service Center are in prison.

Their mothers are serving time for crimes from fraud, to drug dealing, to robbery – but also devoting time to nap schedules and potty training. As one mother makes funny faces to a scrum of giggling toddlers in the common area, another, Magela (who asked to withhold her full name for her family’s privacy), is putting her young daughter down for a nap. The walls of the bedroom are almost