Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993 TAG: 9303070145
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CINDY CORELL DAILY NEWS LEADER
DATELINE: CRAIGSVILLE (AP) LENGTH: Medium
INMATES GETTING NON-VIOLENCE TIPS FROM THEIR PEERS
With its chalkboard, narrow table and chairs pulled into a semicircle, it looks like any other classroom.But R. Kelly Stepp, wearing work boots, jeans and a sweat jacket, doesn't look like a professor.
The men sitting before him don't seem to mind. They aren't like any other students.
"What we're going to do here is read some essays, study them over, then hold an open discussion about them," Stepp said. "These essays I'm passing out are the classics, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, et cetera.
"And by the end of the course, you're going to write two essays yourselves from your perspective."
Before the groans can start, Stepp's teaching partner speaks up from the second row. "It doesn't matter when you write them. I didn't write mine until the last two weeks. But the important thing is to write them from the way you think, not what somebody else thinks."
This is no ordinary discussion class. Stepp; his teaching partner, Joseph Giarratano; and the dozen men taking the course Alternatives to Violence all are in the Augusta County Correctional Center for violent crimes.
They say they want to bring an end to their violent ways.
Giarratano has known violence all his life, he said. At age 11, he was using and dealing drugs. "Winding up on death row saved my life," he said.
Giarratano was convicted of the slaying of a Norfolk woman and her 15-year-old daughter with whom he shared a home. Death-penalty opponents discovered numerous inconsistencies in the evidence and took the information to Gov. Douglas Wilder's office. Within weeks of his scheduled execution, Wilder overturned his death sentence, which was commuted to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole in about 11 years.
While still on death row, Giarratano filled his time reading and studying. He was published in the Law Review of Yale University School of Law and worked for the Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons.
But when he began talking with a new cellmate early in 1992 he found more to do inside prison.
"After staying up all night talking about all of this . . . we decided, `Hey, why not get a class together here?' " Giarratano said. He had just been moved from self-imposed solitary confinement where he could work in peace to a regular cell when he met Stepp, his new cellmate.
The two began to evaluate each other.
"You never know in here if somebody's feeding you a line, so we just started talking about our lives and stuff," he said.
They discovered they'd both spent time in the Tidewater area, had been commercial fishermen and worked on the same boat for the same captain.
As Giarratano unpacked his belongings, they realized they'd read the same books. What Stepp knew of Giarratano was of his legendary achievements in the prison system. Giarratano knew that Stepp had a quick temper and a bad habit of handling conflict with violence.
"He's been through just about every program the prison has to offer," Giarratano said. "He's tried self-control, anger control."
Like many inmates, Stepp wasn't able to change his behavior with institutional courses taught by institutional instructors, so the two decided to create a program that might work. Giarratano took the course outline to Assistant Warden Stuart Taylor.
"What I liked about this was the intellectual stimulation in prisons. That's the important issue," Taylor said. "If even one guy in here learns some way other than violence, then it has worked."
With the course approved, Giarratano and Stepp set out to find their students. "We wanted to find the people we felt needed the course, not the ones who were already out there getting help," Giarratano said.
The first class had 12 prisoners, including Charles Turner.
Incarcerated for rape 19 years ago, Turner never tried the classes held in prison. He didn't see the use, he said. He joined this one because of the instructors.
"After I got into it, I found out it's something I needed. I've been violent all my life. I grew up around it; I got involved in it early. I thought that's all there was. All it got me was locked up for 19 years," Turner said.
Maybe Turner hasn't turned his life around, but now instead of figuring out ways of mindlessly filling up his sentence, he's chairman of the special projects committee and stays busy writing letters.
"It's time to make something out of my life," he said.