This proposal of classes in which students write in response to literature strongly resembles the program affiliated with the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Changing Lives through Literature (CLTL):

In the fall of 1991, Robert Waxler, Robert Kane, and Wayne St. Pierre, a New Bedford District Court probation officer (PO), initiated the first program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where Waxler is a professor in the English Department. Eight men were sentenced to probation instead of prison, with an important stipulation: they had to complete a Modern American Literature seminar run by Professor Waxler. The seminar was held on the university campus and included Judge Kane and PO St. Pierre. For 12 weeks, the men, many of whom had not graduated from high school and who had among them 148 convictions for crimes such as armed robbery and theft, met in a seminar room at the university. By discussing books, such as James Dickey's Deliverance and Jack London's Sea Wolf, the men began to investigate and explore aspects of themselves, to listen to their peers, to increase their ability to communicate ideas and feelings to men of authority who they thought would never listen to them, and to engage in dialogue in a democratic classroom where all ideas were valid. Instead of seeing their world from one angle, they began opening up to new perspectives and started realizing that they had choices in life. Thus, literature became a road to insight. In 1992, a women's program was added by combining the Lynn and Lowell District Courts …, and a graduation format was established in which probationers who had finished a set of CLTL sessions received praise and certificates of completion in front of a full courtroom. (http://cltl.umassd.edu/home-flash.cfm)