CRANSTON — The four Girl Scouts and their mothers form a circle by the wall where the prison’s visitation rules are stenciled in red paint: no cell phones, no metal, no glass, no drinks.

Across the room, a correctional officer leans over his desk, watching with mild interest as the participants raise their hands and recite the Girl Scout Promise: “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times and to live by the Girl Scout Law.”

In this special Girl Scout troop, the mothers wear the uniforms: dark green T-shirts and sweat pants identifying them as inmates in the minimum-security unit of the Adult Correctional Institutions. The girls, ranging in age from 4½ to 12, have been asking, though, for their Girl Scout sashes.

“You guys know what we’re doing today?” asks Gail Prata, one of two troop organizers here on this rainy Saturday.

“Making those little whoopee cushions?” responds Michelle, 12, whose mother, Janelle Dyes, is serving time for robbery.

“That’s right — our sit-upons,” says troop coordinator Mary Ann Topp. “We’ll be sewing them up three-quarters of the way and then some of the older scouts will be stuffing them with newspapers for our outdoor day. So let’s put some tables together.”

In spring 2006, Rhode Island joined 26 other states in launching a program called Girl Scouts Beyond Bars. Started in 1992 with a grant from the National Institute of Justice, the program aims to strengthen the bond between daughters and their incarcerated mothers and break the generational cycle of crime.

“All research study shows if the mother is incarcerated,” says Topp, “there’s the likelihood that their children will be incarcerated, too.”

Three quarters of women and nearly half of all men at the ACI have children. Many report having little contact with them.

Prison is a harsh place. “We do have some other moms in the program whose children don’t visit,” says Topp. They still participate through writing journals with their daughters. But Topp has found sometimes fear wins out over love with the girls of her troop.

They are too afraid to visit.

During the holidays, at the peak of the program’s participation, Topp had 10 mothers but only 6 children enrolled and visiting. Some of the girls whose mothers were in the medium-security unit “were very afraid about coming up through the gates and wire.”

Like any other troop, the girls also meet twice a month among themselves. They gather at the Big Sisters office in Cranston. Some of the girls — at least one of whom lives in a group home — don’t have transportation to the meetings or to the prison, so Topp and Prata, who work for the Girls Scouts of Rhode Island, pick them up. The girls come from around the state. Unlike other troops, they are bound by situation, not geography.

Inside the visitation room, the women and their daughters arrange six small tables into one large work area.

The mothers keep their daughters close by their sides or in their laps as Topp and Prata hand out two sheets of green striped vinyl material that the children will sew together with red yarn to create big pockets.

The sit-upons will be used around the campfire later in the month when the troop spends a day at a Girl Scout camp in North Kingstown.

A couple of the women whose prison terms will have expired plan to go along as volunteers. But of course, not all will be getting out in time.

“Are you going to be with us on our outdoor day?” Prata asks Dawn Jacques, 30, whose daughter Emilee, 4½, sits on her lap, trying to pierce the tough vinyl with a plastic needle. Jacques stretches the material tight for her and the needle pokes through.

“I’m not sure,” says Jacques. She is scheduled to be paroled to a residential drug-treatment program in a few days. The program will allow Emilee to live with her. “If not,” Jacques says, “her aunt will take her.”

Like many women at the ACI, Jacques, of Cranston, is serving time on drug-related charges.

“The best thing I like about it are the women who come in from the Girl Scouts,” says Jacques. “They treat us like the mothers we are, not why we’re here or how we got here.”

Dyes, 30, of Providence, is serving six years on a first-degree robbery charge. She thanks the Girl Scout program for arranging for her to see her youngest daughter, Antonetta, 8.

“I wasn’t seeing my other daughter because her father doesn’t have transportation, so this was like a real blessing,” Dyes says. Topp or Prata now pick Antonetta up and bring her on the two Saturdays a month that the troop meets behind bars.

“I’ve been here four years,” Dyes says. “Nobody was coming to visit me. I had nobody, no support. I didn’t have my kids, and I just lost hope.”

Michelle, her oldest daughter, hugs her mom: “Why did you lose hope?” she asks.

Dyes beams a smile: “You come with the Girl Scout people, now, right? You’re happy to see me now?”

Topp says the Girl Scout program provides an incentive for the women to remain good inmates; institutional infractions can jeopardize their participation.

“We have had some moms who have been in trouble before and they said they don’t want to get in trouble anymore because they don’t want to miss any meetings.”

As part of the year-long program, Topp and Prata also meet with the women alone twice a month. They talk about what troop activities the mothers want to do and about ways of improving their parenting skills; of better communicating and reaching out to their daughters. What the women learn is often practiced during the troop meetings when as a group they talk, for instance, about coping with “things that make you sad or happy.”

Topp and Prata never ask the women why they’re in prison. “We don’t need to know.”

Some mothers, Topp knows, come to the program in hopes of improving their chances with the parole board or gaining custody of their children after release. She impresses upon all who join: “That’s not going to happen. This is something for you and your daughter.”

Christine Iafrate is the national project manager for the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program. Over the last 15 years, national evaluations have shown the program not only helps the girls personally grow but it eases their incarcerated mothers’ transition back into their mothering roles again.

“A lot of time, mothers aren’t accustomed to mothering, particularly women after a long period of time incarcerated,” says Iafrate. “This really helps empower them into that leadership role again.”

Kenneth G. Findlay, professional services coordinator for the Department of Corrections “can’t say enough about the program,” now funded with a $15,000 grant from Hasbro. Findlay organizes and reviews the outside programs run inside the prison.

“We need more programming for family unification, family support,” he says. “The stronger the family is upon release, the better chance the offender won’t re-offend.”

As the hour-long troop meeting draws to a close, Prata collects the sit-upons. The mothers and daughters form the Friendship Circle by the wall.

They cross their arms in front and reach for the hands of those beside them. Then the group falls quiet.

One by one each silently makes a wish, signaling when they are done by squeezing the hand of the person to their left and putting a foot in the circle. The next one takes her turn and soon a pattern of big foot then little foot forms in the center of the circle.

When they are done, on Topp’s count — “one-two-three” — they start to turn and still holding hands, spin out of the circle, freeing their wishes to come true.

tmooney@projo.com