Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 31, 1994 TAG: 9405310082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHARINE WEBSTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOWELL, MASS. LENGTH: Medium
Sean Campbell, 38, who already had been to prison twice, was told she could either complete a college-level literature class featuring novels by women writers, or face jail time.
She chose Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros and Barbara Kingsolver. She says it changed her life.
"It's the first time anybody ever gave me a chance," Campbell said.
"Before, it was always, `Warehouse her.' There was nothing else ever available or offered. The support was never there. The interest in the person was never there. And this time, it was," she said.
To qualify for the "Changing Lives Through Literature" course, offenders need only "a minimal degree of literacy" and motivation to change. Sex offenders or those using illegal drugs or alcohol are excluded.
"We're talking about people who commit crime after crime - robbery, petty theft, credit card fraud - things people do because of lifestyle dead ends, poverty, and not having education," said Jean Trounstine, a professor at Middlesex Community College who teaches the three-month class for women.
The judge and probation officers take the class alongside a half-dozen women offenders, who are required to read a novel every two weeks and attend all six classes and a courtroom graduation.
If they drop out, they go to jail.
"I had a lot of people praying for me," said Melanie Thompson, 24, of Beverly, who graduated in January. "If the judge had judged me just by looking at my record, I would have gotten jail time."
Thompson, who had several prostitution convictions, credits her recent conversion to Christianity - not the course - with turning her life around.
"I have no interest in non-Christian authors . . . so I was really, really angry about having to take this course," Thompson said.
But she still got something out of it.
"It taught me patience, taught me to stick with things," she said. "It was neat to accomplish something. . . . I've always been a quitter."
The program began with a class for men offenders taught at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth by English department chairman Robert P. Waxler. Waxler persuaded District Judge Robert Kane, who is based in New Bedford, to start sentencing offenders to the class in 1991.
Bristol County prosecutors also agreed to recommend offenders, as long as they were not up for sentencing on a violent crime, said Lewis Armistead, the county's chief district court prosecutor.
Waxler believes discussion of the books' themes and characters - men coping with crises and violent impulses - helps students reflect on their own behavior.
"These guys got into a situation where they have been so marginalized that they do not believe any longer that their voice is being heard anywhere in society," Waxler said.
"That's coupled with a sense that the only way they can communicate is through acts of violence," he said. Students in his first class had an average of 18 convictions apiece.
Campbell said books like Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" - about "single females and the struggles they had to overcome in their lives" - hit home for her.
Kane and Dever said having judges and probation officers take the class is critical, because offenders feel like someone in authority wants to hear their opinions.
"You didn't see them as the judge and the probation officer. They were just other people in the class," said Lisa Hall, 20, of Lynn, who was placed on probation after pawning a stolen bracelet given to her by her boyfriend.
There are signs the program contributes to rehabilitation, according to a preliminary study by Roger Jarjoura, a professor of criminal justice at Indiana University.
He tracked 32 male graduates of Waxler's course over a 2 1/2-year period and found only 19 percent were convicted of new crimes, compared to 45 percent of a group of men with similar backgrounds who were sentenced to prison.
But Jarjoura cautioned the study results were inconclusive, because the offenders chosen for the program already were motivated to change. The women's program, which began a year ago for offenders brought before Lowell and Lynn district courts, was not studied.
Waxler and Trounstine admit the program doesn't work for everyone. A few offenders have dropped out, and most of the state's prisoners are functionally illiterate or in the grips of drug and alcohol addictions.
But the majority of those sentenced to literature have improved their lives, the professors said.
Since graduating last August, Campbell has begun community college with plans to earn a four-year degree and become a radiologist. Thompson has stayed sober and joined a course in evangelism offered by the Assemblies of God. Hall has earned her high school equivalency degree and plans to enroll in accounting classes at a community college in September.
At $500 per student, "Changing Lives Through Literature" is a bargain compared to the high cost of jail, Kane said.
by CNB