Keeping Incarcerated Mothers and Their Daughters Together: Girl Scouts Beyond Bars

This Program Focus discusses the social and judicial context of Girl Scouts Beyond Bars, describes the first four programs in operation, and concludes with an examination of the broader issues that these programs should confront to effectively change the lives of youths at risk. Girl Scout Beyond Bars is an inmate mother-child visitation program that began as a National Institute of Justice demonstration project in November 1992. This first-of-its-kind Girl Scout troop consists of more than 30 daughters whose mothers live at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women. The girls meet with their mothers at the corrections facility 2 Saturdays a month, and on alternate Saturdays they meet at a Baltimore church where they work closely with Girl Scout volunteers on projects just as girls in other troops would.