THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409100179
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: FACING THE FEAR
PAYING THE PRICE
This series is a combined project of The Associated Press, the Newport
News Daily Press, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Roanoke Times &
World News, and The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star.
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
OK, it's pretty easy to discern what politicians and experts think about parole reform. But what do Virginians think?
We decided to ask you. For six weeks, reporters crisscrossed the state, dodging summer rainstorms and talking to Virginia's citizens about crime and punishment.
These weren't conventional interviews, with reporters grilling residents under hot lights. Nor were they surveys, which do a great job of getting a lot of people's opinions but don't always help understand the reasons behind them.
Instead, we organized local conversations, in libraries, community centers and even a bingo hall. Virginians sat around tables and talked to us. More importantly, they talked to each other.
All told, more than 90 people took part, often taking time off after work. They included whites, African Americans and Asian Americans, retirees and teenagers, blue-collar workers and executives in suits.
There were eight conversations, in Newport News, Franklin, Roanoke, Richmond, Prince William County and Arlington. The ground rules were simple: Don't debate statistics, just tell us what you think; argue about it, but don't fight; and try to imagine we're sitting around your kitchen table.
Our notion was to learn what people understood and didn't understand about a complex topic. And what they discovered together. Sometimes, we think about things as a group differently than we do individually.
We found people were eager to talk, opening up to us with their fears and frustrations. Over 16 hours, we heard about education, religion, raising children and a host of other subjects that were closely linked to crime and parole.
For the most part, people didn't talk as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives. They spoke to us as parents, children, voters, victims of crime, volunteers, and neighbors. In short, they spoke to us as citizens.
To test voters' attitudes about the same topic, the newspapers also conducted a traditional, random telephone survey.
The results, incorporated in today's articles and the one to appear Thursday, were based on interviews with 539 registered voters, whose sex and race generally mirrored Virginia as a whole. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
The survey was conducted during the period July 29 through Aug. 8.
KEYWORDS: PAROLE REFORM VIRGINIA INTERVIEWS
OPINIONS by CNB