From left, Jennifer Morin, Donna Prout and Brandy Graff take part in the weekly victim impact class for female inmates at the ACI, run by Family Services of Rhode Island. The class aims to show the inmates the consequences of their actions.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

CRANSTON –– In a nearly matter-of-fact tone, Jeanne Sherman talked about what happens to the families of people who’ve died violently.

Some of those left behind never stop feeling anger, the clinician from Family Services of Rhode Island told the small group of female inmates. They are sad, afraid, hypervigilant of their surroundings, she said.

They relive the episode, as war veterans relive their most nightmarish moments. Some isolate themselves from others, closing off from the world.

Her voice trailed off. One young woman was crying.

“It’s hard for me to hear that,” Brandy Graff said through tears. “I know I did that to a lot of people. I know it never stops for them.”

Graff was 18 when she drove drunk into another car and killed two elderly sisters out on a scenic drive along the shore in Narragansett. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison in June 2007, a month before her 21st birthday.

She thought about the emptiness in her family, as she spends another holiday in prison. And the emptiness, especially, in the families of the women who died in the crash. They were good people, she said. And she had hurt them.

“I hope they don’t have all those problems that you listed,” Graff said, almost pleading, to Sherman.

This was the third week in an eight-week class that focused on the impact of crimes. Sherman and the eight inmates were meeting in a small classroom at Dorothea Dix Minimum Security Facility, where Sherman had written a quote from Viktor Frankl on the whiteboard behind her: “When we are no longer able to change a situation –– we are challenged to change ourselves,” she read.

They were among the few inmates selected for this special new class to help them empathize with the victims of crimes, even as some of them bore their own scars.

One had a scar across her neck from being slashed. One had been raped as a child. One had lost custody of her children because ofdrug abuse, mental illness and repeated imprisonment. Some had been beaten. Some had seen friends claimed by the street. Most had seen their own lives disappear in a haze of drug addiction that kept returning them, over and over, to the locked cells at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Most in the room were imprisoned for drugs, shoplifting, prostitution or assault. Graff was the only one whose actions caused the death of others.

One inmate found tissue paper for Graff’s tears, as another offered comfort. “Brandy,” she said gently, “you have to know, you didn’t set out to violently hurt those people. It was an accident.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that because of me, people are dead,” Graff said. She grasped the paper in her hands, tears in her voice. “It just hurts. That’s OK. It’s supposed to hurt.”

Crime has a ripple effect that reaches beyond the victim, Sherman said. Graff nodded.

“It’s huge,” the young woman said, “beyond what I ever imagined. It’s hundreds of people. Thousands.”

Eight months ago, the state Department of Corrections began hosting these eight-week “victim impact classes” for male and female inmates at its facilities, using a national curriculum established by the U.S. Department of Justice. Family Services has been contracted to run the classes, using $50,000 from the Byrne Memorial Fund through the Rhode Island Justice Commission, and it is developing another program to assist the female inmates when they are released.

Corrections Director A.T. Wall said that some inmates have told him that the classes have changed their perspective “significantly.” “Their thought patterns didn’t include empathy for the victim prior to taking the class, and many tended to think of themselves as victims because they were caught and imprisoned,” Wall said, in a statement. “I really believe the class has changed the point of view of many who have participated.”

Researchers at the University of New Haven who studied the impact of these classes in other states found changes in inmates’ knowledge and attitudes about the effects of their crimes. There were significantly fewer serious infractions committed by black male inmates who’d taken the classes; other groups showed no effect.

Mario Gaboury, the university’s chairman of criminal justice and director of the Crime Victims Study Center, called the program “very promising” because it reduced serious infractions in prison and increased safety for inmates and correctional officers. But the long-term impact needs more research, he said; at the moment, they have found no significant difference in recidivism.

Associate professor of criminal justice James Monahan, who’d participated in some of the research, said he was heartened to see a change of behavior in the short term. “But then they’re put back in that same environment” when they’re released, he said.

One program is not a panacea, the researchers said. Prisoners re-entering communities need jobs, treatment for substance abuse and depression, and education.

The inmates knew women who’d died violently, other women working as prostitutes, other women with drug addictions, and know that it could have been them.

Donna Prout, who uses the name Kuiwanna, remembered a friend who’d worked the street and been stabbed to death. Prout said her friend’s mother begged her to get off the street and away from drugs. She heard, but didn’t listen.

Prout said her father had been evil, and others told her she’d be just like him. “Look at my life,” Prout said to Sherman. “I’ve been in and out of jail since I was 18. I’m going to be 31. … It makes me feel like a failure. I was a good student, an A student. And look at me. Look at me.”

Graff whispered: “A self-fulfilling prophecy.”

amilkovi@projo.com