They’ve written bad checks, sold drugs and committed murder. Locked behind bars, some of the mothers are serving life sentences.
But the little girls of such convicts will soon be able to walk through the gates at the Broward Correctional Institution for women and join their mothers for Girl Scout meetings.
Starting in October, criminals and beginning Scouts alike will learn the Girl Scout Promise-to be honest, respect authority and improve the world-and earn patches and badges for their efforts.
The program is called Girls Behind Bars. The correctional institution will become the fourth prison in the United States to implement it. The three others are in Jefferson County, Fla.; Baltimore; and Columbus, Ohio.
Girl Scout leaders in Broward County started enrolling interested mothers in August. After that, they’ll find the daughters and enlist them in Scouting.
“We’re hoping to help re-establish some important human bonds,” said Jeannette Archer-Simons, executive director of the Girl Scouts of Broward County.
To that end, state prison officials are willing to ease up on a few regulations.
When someone visits, convicts usually are authorized to receive only two kisses and two hugs: one set when the visitor arrives, the other when the guest leaves. But when the Scouts arrive, says Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kerry Flack, the cuddle limit will be overlooked.
Daughters will be able to sit on their mothers’ laps. At the Jefferson Correctional Institution in Jefferson County, Fla., where Girls Behind Bars started in January, parents and children even roll each others’ hair.
And while ordinary visitors can’t take anything more than money for the canteen to the prison, the Scouts get to tote in materials for arts-and-crafts projects. “We just have to make sure we count scissors and pencils and all that sort of stuff when they leave,” Flack said.
The Girl Scouts believe they’ll find fertile ground for their programs.
According to a 1993 study by the American Correctional Association, 85 percent of female prisoners are mothers. More than half have been victims of physical abuse. More than a third have been sexually abused. A third never completed high school. About a quarter have attempted suicide.
Usually, they haven’t seen their children in years. But legal trouble seems to run in families. Two-thirds of the women in prison have siblings or parents who have already been there, according to national studies.
So before it starts any Scouting activities, Girls Behind Bars puts the mothers in parenting classes once a week. Its goal is to transfer the values of the Girl Scouts into the realm of parenthood.
When the prisoners talk about honesty, for example, they discuss how they need to be frank with their daughters about why they’re in prison.
Finally, the first Scouting meeting takes place.
Troop leader Antwinette Williams was at the Jefferson Correctional Institution when the daughters walked through electronic gates and into their mothers’ arms. “We heard the all-too-real sound of hearing the gate click,” she remembered. “But as we walked up and met those mothers, there were tears from the beginning.”
For their first project together, the girls and mothers paired up to make ceramic heart pins with teddy bears glued in the middle for Mother’s Day. The mothers had to wear stick-on patches instead of bona fide Girl Scout badges, and the children had to take the hearts home; regulations prohibited those things in prison. But the meaning behind the activity stayed with the mothers.
Said one Jefferson prisoner in a letter of thanks to the Scouts: “We sang songs together that I sang as a child. I’ve learned how to be a little girl all over again so that I can better relate to my daughter’s needs.”
