A former local crime reporter said she has found her purpose by teaching inmates how tell the stories behind the crimes they committed.
Debra Des Vignes worked as an on-air news reporter in small markets across the country covering crime. But accoridng to a CNN story recently done on her work, she was only scratching the surface of the full story behind who she was covering.
“We only had what law enforcement told us. I always wondered, but it was such a fast-paced environment,” Des Vignes told CNN. “It’s not that I didn’t care, but we didn’t have time to learn more about his or her background.”
She started volunteering in prisons in 2017, teaching a victim impact class, which is intended to help offenders see the consequences of their crimes from the victim’s perspective.
“I think society has that image of TV and movies and what that represents, and how a criminal is supposed to act or behave with a chip on their shoulder or angry,” Des Vignes said. “I found the exact opposite.”
In the class, she had the inmates write a letter to their victims. She said that’s when she saw the men open up in ways they hadn’t before.
“There was a lot of raw talent in that room,” she said.
That class inspired Des Vignes to start her own nonprofit to focus on writing with incarcerated individuals. In 2018, the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop was born.
Des Vignes’ 12-week creative writing program originated in one Indiana prison and has since expanded to eight correctional institutions across Indiana, Alabama, and Illinois. For Des Vignes, spending time with prisoners has humanized the crime stories she once covered.
“With this work, learning their stories and where they come from, puts it all into perspective,” she said. “It doesn’t make me feel bad about my reporting back then, but I realize the humanity of living.”
The curriculum, developed by Des Vignes and her all-volunteer team, provides incarcerated students with a foundation in creative writing through weekly prompts and introduces fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and playwriting. For Des Vignes, the goal is to create a sacred space where they can write and openly share.
“Some may want to make sense of their past, some may want to spend the hour and a half in a positive environment,” Des Vignes said. “And some may just want to be heard and felt seen and welcomed.”
For Chris Lewis, who was formerly incarcerated, the course helped him find compassion in prison.
“One of the hardest things to hold onto is your humanity, and then somebody looks right down the middle and says, ‘Man, that’s a human being.’ That means the world to you,” Lewis said. “When Deb came in, she just [saw] us as human beings.”
