[Tarabuco, Bolivia; December 6. Image via Getty]

A local woman leaves after casting her vote during presidential elections in Tarabuco on December 6, 2009.Bolivian President Evo Morales, an Aymara native and former coca farmer —and a fervent anti-US leader— looked poised to easily win re-election and take control of the senate, the last bastion of the opposition. If those outcomes are confirmed, Morales would have the authority to push on with leftist reforms that already include limiting the size of landholdings, nationalizing the energy and telecommunications sectors, and empowering downtrodden indigenous communities. AFP PHOTO/Ernesto Benavides (Photo credit should read ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP/Getty Images)

[Tiquina, Bolivia; November 16. Image via Getty]

Two elderly women walk in the port in the locality of Tiquina, 117 km from La Paz in the Bolivian Altiplano on November 16, 2009. A hundred passengers are stranded due to a block by people from this locality against the building of a bridge which, according to them, will reduce their earnings —mainly based on the rent of their boats for passengers and vehicles. After a week-long roadblock, goods and gasoline is becoming scarce in the Bolivian locality of Copacabana, on the shore of the Titicaca Lake in the border with Peru. AFP PHOTO/Aizar Raldes (Photo credit should read AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images)

[Leganes, Spain; September 13. Image via Getty]

Bolivia's folklore dancers perform during a meeting of Bolivia's President Evo Morales with Bolivian citizens in Spain on September 13, 2009, in Leganes bullring near Madrid . AFP PHOTO / JAVIER SORIANO (Photo credit should read JAVIER SORIANO/AFP/Getty Images)

[La Paz, July 16. Image via Getty]

An Aymara native parades with her daughter as Bolivian President Evo Morales (out of picture) and other Latin American leaders attend the official celebrations to commemorate the bicentenary of the country's first declaration of independence, in La Paz on July 16, 2009. After sixteen years of struggle for independence, Bolivia was finally declared an independent nation on August 6, 1825. AFP PHOTO/Aizar RALDES (Photo credit should read AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images)

One incarcerated woman says this:

"Above all in this life, I am a mother," says [Andrea Virginia] Tapia, who is in her 30s and is the mother of seven kids, four of whom live in the prison with her. (The others live with her mother.) "They are best with me," she adds, as her three-year-old snuggles into her lap, "regardless of where that is."

The director of the penal system agrees.

"We've seen that this is best for mother, or father, and child," says Jorge Lopez, Director of Bolivia's Penitentiary System. "It's important not to rip those bonds between parent and child."

Altruistic sentiments about mother-child boding aside, there are some practical reasons as well.

In Bolivia, South America's poorest country, it's often financially impossible for family members on the outside to take on more mouths to feed. Orphanages aren't feasible, either: "Children live in worse conditions there than in the prisons - and without their moms and dads," says Rene Estensorro, a psychologist at Semilla de Vida (Seed of Life), a non-governmental organization that works with imprisoned mothers and their children. Lopez agrees. Releasing the kids from the prisons, he says, "means [their] direct entryway onto the street."

Like with the children staying with their mothers in both Mexican and American prisons, people worry about the effects incarceration can have on the children.

The equally important question, of course, is what prison time does to the children. Estensorro acknowledges that "we see a lot of repression in the children." Kids inside the Women's Correctional Facility are punished for normal behavior like waking up in the middle of the night - because they end up waking up everyone else inside the cramped sleeping quarters. School age kids leave the prison each day to attend regular schools but nonetheless suffer isolation from their peers. Another problem: the lack of 24-hour medical care inside the prison. Worse, kids must sometimes share mom's punishment for bad behavior, like solitary confinement.

And that doesn't even include the well-being of 200 children stuck with their incarcerated parents during a prison riot that resulted in the tear-gassing of the facility. But in a society with few social services to offer children whose parents are incarcerated, maybe the occasional prison riot is less dangerous than a few years spent caring for themselves on the streets.

In Bolivia, Keeping Kids And Moms Together - In Prison [Time]

Earlier: Baby Girls Add Touch Of Pink, Peace To Mexico's Prison System
Moms Behind Bars: How To Make The Best Of A Bad Situation

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