CHANGING LIVES - PROBATIONERS USE GREAT BOOKS, GREAT THINKERS TO FIND A NEW
FUTURE

It's mid-May, a Monday evening, twilight in a third-floor classroom at the
Rice University library. Soft light streams in through enormous windows and
washes over a group of nervous students, all men, gathered around a long,
skinny conference table.

At 6:30 sharp, philosophy teacher Larry Jablecki introduces himself and
takes a good, long look around the table.

The men are white, brown and black, and they range in age from late teens
to early 40s. Some are dressed in neatly pressed dress shirts and polished
shoes; others are wearing muscle shirts and sandals. Some speak in
well-modulated tones -- they're college grads. Others mumble and have
trouble reading big words.

This class isn't exactly what it seems.

Jablecki, 60, earns his living as director of the Brazoria County Community
Supervision and Corrections Department, and the students before him are
probationers who have been ordered by Brazoria County judges to earn
varying amounts of community-service hours.

If the men do what they're supposed to do in this class -- show up on time,
participate, complete homework assignments -- they can earn 75 hours of
community-service credit. If they don't, they'll be doing community service
the hard way -- maybe shoveling horse manure or picking up trash by the
side of the road.

"The name of this course is 'Changing Lives Through Literature,' " Jablecki
says, addressing the class firmly. "All of you guys are on probation,
mostly felony probation. If that probation is revoked, most of you will
wind up a number in the prison system. I'd prefer not to see that happen."

Once a week for six weeks, Jablecki will lead his students in the study of
Socrates and John Stuart Mill. They will talk about God, life after death,
consequences, the rights of individuals vs. the authority of the state.

"You decided to commit your crime; you made a choice," Jablecki continues.
"That means you can choose not to commit any other crime. ... You're not
mentally defective or sick or diseased. You have the capacity to change. My
goal is to engage you in a discussion that causes you to reflect on who you
are, where you're going and what you want to do with your lives."

The men sit back, ready to listen.

Most are first offenders who got into trouble because of alcohol or drugs.
They are not sex offenders. They are not murderers.

Most are grateful to be asked their opinions, to have a teacher who seems
to care.

Jablecki listens with all his might. The question that faces everyone
involved in the probation business, he says, is how best to rehabilitate
offenders.

For some offenders, he says, it's as simple and complex as honing reading,
thinking and listening skills.

Jablecki quotes Socrates: "For I do nothing but go about persuading you
all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your
properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of
the soul."

The "Changing Lives Through Literature" program started 10 years ago on a
Massachusetts tennis court.

Robert Kane, then a district-court judge, now a superior-court judge, was
complaining to Bob Waxler, an English professor at the Dartmouth campus of
the University of Massachusetts, that he lacked satisfactory sentencing
options.

They'd had the discussion many times before, but this time, Waxler had an
idea. Send him eight or nine of the most troublesome probationers, the
English prof told the judge. He would rehabilitate them with great books.

"My argument was literature could really make a difference," says Waxler,
who came to Houston in the spring to visit with Jablecki and promote
"Changing Lives." "I thought reading, discussion and exchanging different
perspectives would be important.

"Often criminal offenders have no voice," Waxler says. "They're pushed to
the margins, and they have no confidence. I wanted a program that would
allow them to find their voices."

His first group consisted of eight men with 142 convictions among them.
Waxler tried to choose books with themes that would resonate with them --
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men.

He also made sure the class met in a comfortable room on campus, a place
the men would be proud to claim.

"Many of these men have fallen off the educational track," he says. "The
challenge is to put them back on."

The class ran for 12 weeks, meeting every other week for two hours.

After a few weeks, Waxler saw improvements. One of his most changed
students was a drug dealer with a girlfriend and a toddler. In the past, he
had neglected both.

After the first week, the probationer pronounced the course better than
jail. The second and third weeks, he was excited about the literature he
was reading. Soon he was debating the finer points with Waxler, reading to
his daughter, working on his relationship with his girlfriend.

Soon the same young man was making plans to continue his education, and he
turned away from friends who tried to drag him back to the street.

More than 1,000 men and women have gone through the Massachusetts program
since 1991. Early on, Waxler hired researchers from Northeastern University
to evaluate the course.

The researchers studied the first 32 probationers who took the course and a
control group of 32 probationers who did not.

The men who studied literature with Waxler had a recidivism rate of 18
percent. Those in the control group had a recidivism rate of 45 percent.

Waxler and Kane, thrilled to see progress, pressed forward with "Changing
Lives." Soon they were joined by Massachusetts educator Jean Trounstine,
who added female probationers and professors to the mix.

Today the program has spread to 10 locations, including several states in
the Northeast, Arizona, Kansas and one county in Texas.

Jablecki heard about "Changing Lives" in 1997 after a probation and parole
conference in Chicago. He missed Waxler's presentation because he was
giving one of his own. Leafing through the program later, he saw the talk,
titled "Throw the Book at Them," and called Waxler.

Jablecki, who already was teaching philosophy to prisoners, says his first
thought was, "Why didn't I think of that?"

He knew that men and women who take college courses and get degrees while
incarcerated have recidivism rates of 8 percent to 10 percent, compared to
50 percent to 60 percent for prisoners who don't have the benefit of schooling.

Jablecki was sold. But he knew that Brazoria County's judges had to be
equally convinced of the benefits of education before he could bring the
"Changing Lives" program home to Texas.

State District Judge Robert May was one of the first converts, and he
supplied the probationers for Jablecki's first class in January 1998. Since
then Jablecki, English professor Jill Carroll and a few others have taught
"Changing Lives Through Literature" to more than 500 probationers. The
classes are offered at Brazosport College in Lake Jackson, Alvin Community
College and Rice.

Some people, Jablecki acknowledges, are vehemently opposed to the "Changing
Lives" program. Some victims' groups and judges believe it coddles
probationers when what they deserve is punishment.

"I see 'Changing Lives' as a crime-prevention program that prevents many,
many other people from becoming victims," Jablecki says. "If all we do is
punish and collect our pound of flesh, then we'll reap the benefits with
more crime. People who don't change will commit more crime. The worse the
behavior, the more important change is.

"We're talking about a revolution in criminal justice. That's what I told
Waxler when I first met him."

Jablecki, born in Kansas City, Kan., and reared in Kansas City, Mo., knows
a little something about change. He was a freshman preparing to drop out of
what was then Bethany Nazarene College in Oklahoma and devote his life to
bowling when he met a senior who convinced him to stay one more semester
and try a philosophy course.

"That's when I met Socrates and all the great problems of human existence.
That one course turned my life around in a very profound way," he says.

"I sold my bowling ball and bought some philosophy books."

Jablecki went on to get his master's from Vanderbilt University and his
doctorate from Manchester University in England. He was fully prepared to
spend the rest of his life teaching in England when his wife, Donna
Jablecki, made a trip to her parents' home in Lake Jackson and called him
late one night.

Her parents were in failing health. And the Jableckis wanted to adopt
children. After going through months of interviews and tests to judge their
fitness as parents in England, they finally were rejected because they were
foreigners and probably would take a child out of the country.

In Donna Jablecki's opinion, it was time to move back home.

She found a full-time job teaching high school biology, but his search
became so desperate that he took a janitorial job cleaning up chemicals at
plants around Angleton.

"The first day on the job I was given a shovel and told to dig a ditch,"
Jablecki says. "Those were dark days."

Finally he talked the director of the new probation department in Brazoria
County into hiring him as an adult probation officer in 1979. "He was
concerned that I wouldn't be able to communicate with probationers because
of my education."

Jablecki is a plain talker. It wasn't a problem.

Jablecki hopes other counties in Texas will adopt the "Changing Lives" program.

Thus far, however, law-enforcement officials around the state haven't
jumped at the chance.

Nancy Platt, Jablecki's counterpart in Harris County, hems and haws at the
thought of selling "Changing Lives" to local judges who regularly defend
capital punishment and other harsh sentences.

"With the brand-new courthouse in shambles and the jail flooded, there's
just no time to think about it now," she says.

State District Judge Ted Poe, famous for his tough stance on crime, sounds
equally frustrated by damage left by Tropical Storm Allison but ready to
hear more about "Changing Lives."

"I think what Larry Jablecki is doing is a good idea," the judge said. "It
promotes the mind, it develops the mind, and it gets individuals to
concentrate on other things besides selfish ambition. We should use more
and more programs like that."

The cost to Brazoria County is less than $10,000 for seven classes a year.
The cost to individual probationers who choose to enroll is $25.

Jablecki's most recent course, offered at Rice because administrators there
support the program and some probationers who commit crimes in Brazoria
County live in or near Houston, concluded June 25. The students found the
course thought-provoking and, in some cases, life-changing. Several are
planning to go back to school. Others hope to live more thoughtful, more
orderly lives. Still others say they enjoyed the class even if it didn't
change them fundamentally and they appreciate that someone was listening to
them.

Usually, they say, probation means humiliation. Their comments jibe with
the findings of University of Texas at Austin researchers who recently
evaluated the Brazoria County program. Their report says most probationers
start the classes thinking, "This is going to suck" or "This is a joke" or
"Hey, (at least) it's 75 hours (of community service)."

As the classes continue, however, the comments change to " ... It's pretty
cool," "I was really surprised" and "I started looking forward to it."

William Kelly, a professor and director of UT's Center for Criminology and
Criminal Justice Research, supervised the research project. When he and
other researchers asked probationers how the class compared to more
conventional community-service requirements, their replies included: "It's
not punishment -- it has a purpose," "It's more focused on helping us," "It
is constructive," and "This program is the only program that actually helps
offenders."

Added one probationer, "This is the first time anyone cared."

At the end of the class, Jablecki presented the group at Rice with
certificates and hardcover books of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

From the bottom of his heart, he wishes them well.

"I remember what I did when I was young," he says. "No details, but I was a
stinker."