This former crime reporter uses writing to help people in prison transform their lives

After spending a decade as a crime reporter, CNN Hero Debra Des Vignes created the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop, a nonprofit writing program that helps incarcerated people work through trauma and find community.

Debra Des Vignes spent more than a decade as an on-air news reporter in small markets across the US. For most of that time, she covered crime. It wasn’t until later that she realized she didn’t know the full story of the people she was covering. “We only had what law enforcement told us. I always wondered, but it was such a fast-paced environment,” Des Vignes said. “It’s not that I didn’t care, but we didn’t have time to learn more about his or her background.” Des Vignes had always wanted to volunteer at a prison to better understand the people behind the stories she covered. The opportunity came in 2017 when she met a co-worker whose husband worked for the local prison. Des Vignes volunteered to teach 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.”