I spent the morning in prison.

The Maryland Correctional Institute for Women, to be exact, home to 836 female inmates from around the state. A group of them from a program called Prisoners United Sharing Hope, was lecturing 32 middle school girls from Baltimore, brought to the Jessup prison from two mentoring programs under City Hall. They are at-risk kids, identified for their bad grades and questionable attitudes, hopefully before they end up in a place like this.

Unfortunately, I missed the tour of the cell blocks and got there in time for the group therapy session in the gym, which I also detail in today's column. The inmates, imprisoned for just about everything up to and including gun violence and murder, are carefully picked. They admit their crimes, accept responsibility and are willing to talk about the most personal parts of their lives.

I sat in on a group session led inmates that included Jenene Brown, 31, who is serving time for murder stemming from a domestic incident, and Flotania Green, 34, serving time for gun convictions. She's an admitted member of the Bloods gang.

The session, as most of these things do, started slow. First off, this isn't Scared Straight. The inmates don't yell or intimidate (the theory now is if these kids suffer being yelled at while at home, more yelling won't get through). Instead, they began by having one girl describe what she liked about herself to another girl.

Brown faced off against a shy girl who kept shielding her face with her hands. "I'm pretty smart," the girl said.

"What else do you like about yourself," Brown asked.

"My long hair," the girl answered after a few minutes.

And so it went -- the two-minute drill dragging.

Brown, who had done this before, easily filled two minutes, describing herself as ambitious, independent, no nonsense and filled with a big heart. She talked about having a child and not being able to see him. "I like that I'm a good mother despite the fact I'm here."

At the end, she told the student, "You think about this and what it means to be you. I'm going to ask you again, at the end."

They went around the room asking what made people lash out. Here are some answers from both the students and the inmates: "running your mouth"; "I don't like people in my face"; "If somebody hurts my son in any kind of way"; "when someone gets in my face"; "people who lie to me".

One of the students asked the inmates whether they regret being locked up because they have children. One prisoner said she had four children, ages 5, 12, 14 and 16. "I feel guilty because I know that my children need me. My 12-year-old says, 'Mommy, I wish you were here.'"

Said another inmate: "I don't feel guilty at all" and said her 2-year-old (who was 3 1/2 months old when she went to prison). Added another, who has three children ages 6, 8 and 17: "I'm sad, very sad. It hurts because I think my 17-year-old is following in my footsteps."

Brown has an 11-year-old girl, who she described as active. "She'll say, 'I'm ready for you to come home,' but it's not like she focuses only on her mother being in jail."

Then it was time for the inmates to go around the circle and give their criminal histories, a sobering reality for the children. They recite all the charges, from the most serious to the most petty, as if they're part of a resume that should be read unvarnished. "Distribution of heroin," says one woman. "conspiracy to commit murder, murder," says another.

The kids were part of two mentoring groups that work under Baltimore City Hall, one the Young Women in Action Program. Denise Parker runs the mentoring program and told me that the kids on Thursday are on the cusp, identified as troubled children but not yet involved in the criminal justice system. Parker had previously worked at the Waxter Children's Center, where she tried to help a young woman caught up in the juvenile system. She was not happy to see that same woman imprisoned on Thursday.

The inmates in the PUSH program manage to raise money for charity -- the prison allows products such a bed and bath items and sandwiches to come into the prison and sold, with the proceeds donated. On Thursday, PUSH presented a check $907.11 to an organization that trains guide dogs.

Also on Thursday, in Baltimore, Mayor Sheila Dixon presented awards to kids who have succeeded, part of Youth Violence Prevention Week. Here is a statement: