Surely, the system can do better

Motherhood and jail are not a happy combination.

The courts should make some effort not to superimpose the two. Doubtless they do. Pregnancy, on the other hand, can hardly be allowed to become a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for serious offenses.

Nor can corrections officers, who have other skills and priorities, be expected to operate long-term child care facilities, or sophisticated adoption services.

The correct default setting is to place a child born into such circumstances with a responsible family member as soon as possible. It appears that's what state corrections officials were attempting to do when they handed over a baby girl, now 3 years old, to a relative of Danielle Allen, who gave birth in 2005 while serving time in the women's prison in North Las Vegas for possession of a controlled substance.

But as questions now arise whether an abused 3-year-old girl rescued in an April 22 Wisconsin drug bust is that same infant, news that the state has no record of the birth -- or into whose custody the child was entrusted -- evoke visions of infants being tossed into the arms of whoever shows up knocking at the jailhouse door.

How did the infant end up with Heidi Hildahl, a reputed drug user who has been arrested on charges of prostitution? Is that who Nevada prison officials handed her to? Why don't they know?

They can generally hand an inmate back her purse and shoes when she's released. Isn't it more important to keep track of what they did with her baby?

Green Bay authorities still don't know the identity of the infant and have not ruled out that she could be Everlyse Cabrera, a toddler who went missing from a North Las Vegas foster home in June 2006.

When a child is born to a prisoner, the Corrections Department doesn't investigate the inmate's choice of a guardian or conduct a background check, says department spokeswoman Suzanne Pardee. The Clark County Department of Family Services would have gotten involved only if an inmate couldn't find anyone to take her newborn, Ms. Pardee explains.

In other states, child welfare agencies work with inmates -- who generally have some warning the blessed event is forthcoming -- to identify several potential custodians, and then do background checks and home inspections to determine suitability.

That doesn't sound too invasive.

Again, honoring the mother's wishes and placing children with a family member is ideal. We hope we'd be the last to encourage the development of some vast new snarl of bureaucratic red tape for the approximately 25 to 30 infants born to Nevada inmates each year.

But no record of the birth, or who the child was given to?

Surely the system can do a little better than that.