A Christian organization that provides programs for inmates is asking the Manitoba government to allow it to create Canada's first faith-based prison unit.

Prison Fellowship Canada wants the province to incorporate such a unit into the new women's jail being built in the rural municipality of Headingley, six kilometres west of Winnipeg's city limits.

Executive director Ellie Clitheroe said the special unit would teach Christian principles and values, similar to aboriginal healing lodges that already exist in several correctional institutions across the country.

Her organization has submitted a formal proposal on the idea to the government.

'We would not require someone to be a professing Christian to enter but we certainly would expect them to be respecting the values and principles that we would be engaged in.'— Ellie Clitheroe, Prison Fellowship Canada

"People that want to be involved in it and would like to focus on this kind of rehabilitation and transformation," Clitheroe said, referring to inmates she says are seeking such programming, which is becoming more common around the world.

Prison Fellowship Canada is part of Prison Fellowship International, an association of more than 100 organizations worldwide.

The Christian programming would be paid in part by her group, Clitheroe said, adding that participation in the program would be voluntary.

"We would not require someone to be a professing Christian to enter but we certainly would expect them to be respecting the values and principles that we would be engaged in," she said.

"Ideally, we would be able to be, if the individual is interested, involved right from remand through the sentence, into a halfway house and hopefully, thereafter as well, in a supportive way in the community."

A Manitoba government official told CBC News that no decisions have yet been made on what kind of programs or units will be available in the new jail.

Construction of the 120,000-square-foot facility, which will have 100 cells, started in June and is expected to be complete in the summer of 2011. It is slated to open that fall.