Changing Lives Through Literature Program

The URI English Department is the host institution for the statewide Changing Lives through Literature program. By agreement with the Rhode Island District Court, Bryant University, Rhode Island College, and the University of Rhode Island, literature professors from a range of Rhode Island universities and colleges teach courses to participants sentenced to our program in lieu of jail or other punishment. This alternative sentencing program, instituted by Chief Judge DeRobbio, and implemented through the Pre-Trial Services Unit of the District Court led by Director Judith Caprio, provides offenders with a way to consider their choices without being incarcerated. It is an inventive approach to reducing recidivism and enhancing the lives of its participants. The program is groundbreaking in its ability to bring University English departments and State Courts together in a common goal.

Changing Lives through Literature seminars meet bi-weekly for twelve weeks and include up to twelve participants per class. Led by a literature professor, and attended by a court representative, the Changing Lives through Literature program uses literature to consider the obstacles to optimal living participants encounter every day. By examining the issues and responses raised in literary texts to violence, racial conflict, and discipline, among other queries, the program helps students examine how to navigate these tensions in their own lives and create the futures they wish. At the completion of the seminar, participants receive an official certificate of participation. The certificates are presented to the participants in a ceremony held in the court of the sentencing judge. URI Professors Valerie Karno, Dorothy Donnelly, Marty Rojas, and Carolyn Betensky have already taught courses for CLTL. In the spirit of statewide cooperation the program embraces, many courses have been team-taught with Bryant University's Chair and Professor of English, Terri Hasseler. URI Assistant Professor of Journalism Kendall Moore is currently finishing a documentary on the Changing Lives through Literature Program.

The Rhode Island branch of the Changing Lives Through Literature program joins many other states which have embraced this alternate sentencing program. The now nationally acclaimed Changing Lives through Literature program was founded in 1991 by Dr. Robert Waxler, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, along with Massachusetts Judge Robert Kane and Probation Officer Wayne St. Pierre. The Changing Lives Through Literature Program has been featured in the New York Times and the Los Angeles News; it has also been the subject of several feature stories on CBS and NBC broadcasts. Other states which have begun Changing Lives through Literature programs include Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, Arizona, Kansas, and California. The various state programs are all based in English departments in public state universities.

Studies by professors at the University of Indiana and University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth have found that offenders who participate in the program were less than half as likely to commit new crimes as those not in the program. Judge Kane, the first Massachusetts judge to sentence participants to the program, remarked, "I've seen that the traditional approach, weighed toward jail, is not always effective. As a lifelong believer in literature, I thought this was worthy of an experiment. It has turned into my best experience on the bench." Professor Waxler, founder of the National program, comments, "I really believe that of all the tools that we have to humanize the world, literature remains the most powerful. The power of literature is that it mirrors aspects of your own consciousness and also provides a better understanding of your relationship to the larger society."

For more information about the Rhode Island Changing Lives through Literature Program, please contact Rhode Island State Coordinator Marty Rojas, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of English at URI: marty@uri.edu; During the 2006-2007 Academic year, please contact Interim State Coordinator Terri Hasseler, Chair and Professor of English at Bryant University at: thassele@bryant.edu.

More information may be found at the National Changing Lives Through Literature Program Web Site.

The URI Changing Lives Through Literature Program is co-sponsored by the John Hazen White Sr. Center for Ethics and Public Service.