Una Black really didn’t put much thought into the wisdom of buying a puppy. Pet dogs involve a fairly big commitment; they demand your attention and restrict your liberty; they need to be walked and trained, loved and cared for. And you can’t take off for a holiday or even stay out all night unless you have left them with a capable minder. Before you even think about getting a dog, though, you’ve got to be sure that everybody else in your house actually likes them.

Black’s boyfriend’s young daughter did not like dogs. Just why Black did not consider this before she got the animal is anybody's guess but, in any event, the upshot was that the pup had to be fostered out to Black’s friend and neighbour, John Malone. The deal, it appeared, was that Malone expected Black to walk and feed the dog.

But Black didn’t show any great interest in the pup’s welfare and, at one stage, went a whole week without feeding or walking her pet, claiming she’d been laid up with flu. Malone was angered by this neglect and, during a drunken row, told her that he had arranged to sell the dog to a better home. Black armed herself with a knife, went to his flat to retrieve her dog and stabbed Malone to death.

Last week Black was jailed for nine years after she pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge. Judge Paul Carney felt the deliberation involved in fetching a knife before the fatal confrontation moved the crime close to murder on the scale of unlawful killing. The feral triviality of the row must have influenced the sentence too. A man was stabbed to death just because Black felt like having a dog but couldn’t be bothered to care for it.

Black is now having a baby. She is due to give birth within days and her first child, a daughter she has already named Nicole, will go through life in the knowledge that she was born while her mother was in jail for knifing a man to death.

Every time she needs to produce a birth certificate, to make her Communion or Confirmation or to marry, to apply for a passport or a driving licence, or faces a friendly enquiry about where she was born, she’ll live in dread of the truth coming out. This child is already a victim of her mother’s crime, so why should the state collude in heaping further punishment upon her by letting her spend her first 18 months behind prison walls?

At present female prisoners who give birth while in custody are allowed to keep their babies with them for at least that length of time. It can be even longer if the authorities agree. If, for instance, a woman’s sentence was almost over by the 18 month mark then it would be cruel to both herself and the baby to separate them at that point.

Taking a child away both from her mother and from the only home she’s ever known is a distressing and traumatic experience that could have lifelong consequences for that child and ought to be avoided at all costs.

But Black will still have almost five years to serve when her daughter is 18 months and it is unthinkable the little girl could be expected to live inside prison until she’s old enough to attend a senior infants’ classroom. At some stage, then, she will have to be wrenched from her mother’s care, and the cell she will regard as home, and be moved to new surroundings with relatives she’s seen only on prison visits. Either that or a foster home.

Why is the child to be subjected to this profound state-sanctioned upset? Is it because she is viewed as an effective instrument in her mother’s rehabilitation, a bit like woodwork or life coaching? It is because nobody has the stomach for a showdown over the human rights of female prisoners?

Or is it because the authorities consider it easier all round to proceed on the flawed presumption that any woman who is physically capable of producing a baby is also practically, emotionally and morally fit to be the best possible carer for that child - even if she’s a cold-blooded killer, a violent drunk and a woman who couldn’t be trusted to care for a puppy.

The practice of allowing women prisoners doing time for serious offences to keep their children inside until they are toddlers needs to be reviewed in the light of this case. The question nobody wants to ask is, exactly whose interests does the system serve? And whose welfare ought to be of paramount concern?

Having their babies with them in their cells might well make women prisoners calmer, more compliant, easier to handle. And having bonded with a child over a year or more might indeed provide the necessary incentive to deal with an addiction or avoid criminal company in future. Mothers from disadvantaged areas, and without extended families of their own, might even get a better grounding in parenting skills in a supportive environment than if they were out fending for themselves and their children in some fractured community.

If the mother is breastfeeding then there’s an argument for leaving the child in her care for as long as that continues. But a great many babies survive without being breast-fed and I’m not convinced the nutritional benefit outweighs the emotional trauma of the eventual separation, not to mention the enduring stigma of having started your life in a prison cell.

The prison system has other obligations to society beyond just the rehabilitation of prisoners. It must also have punitive and deterrent elements. The women’s jail, the Dochas Centre, is still a prison, even if it sounds like a high-end holistic retreat.

The inmates have to endure the temporary suspension of basic rights the rest of us take for granted: freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom to enjoy the company of friends and family.

Male prisoners whose partners give birth while they’re doing time are not allowed to have cots in their cells so they can bond with the baby for months on end. Mothers of toddlers who are given jail sentences have to leave their children behind. Should we really make an exception for pregnant prisoners, especially when the whole experience is so clearly detrimental to the child's interests?

Black’s mother has said she’s ready and willing to care for her grandchild and to take her daily to visit her mum, for as long as necessary. Parting with the baby is never going to be easy, but handing her over to the care of a trusted relative would be a lot less painful for them both if Black did it straight away.

She’s hardly a woman capable of making so tough and selfless a decision. She didn’t care much for her partner’s daughter’s feelings when she got that dog, after all, much less for the animal itself. So, in the interest of her baby daughter, perhaps the state should make the decision for her.

brenda.power@sunday-times.ie

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