Talking through the pain

Folsom, Calif. — IT'S a warm, cloudless day and Patty O'Reilly is about to meet the man who killed her husband. A million thoughts compete for attention in her head. Two stand out.

\o7Why am I here?

What good will it do?\f7

It has taken O'Reilly 29 months to get to this emotional state, to the point where she can walk on sturdy legs into a maximum-security prison and face a convict who blasted a giant crater in her life.

In the beginning, O'Reilly felt only loathing for the man. She was too wracked by loss to consider anything else.

But gradually she became aware of the possibility, however slight, of finding some useful purpose in her grief. That's why she is here today, in the belly of the state prison at Folsom, with a water bottle, rosary beads and her sister at her side.

Soon a door will swing open, and inmate No. T22186, a man named Mike Albertson, will appear in his prison blues. The two will sit face to face -- victim and victimizer -- and talk. What comes out of it is up to them.

The encounter is a first for the California correctional system. Minnesota, Texas and other states have encouraged such dialogues, but California -- its prisons beset by overcrowding and countless other woes -- is arriving late to the game.

O'Reilly, a petite, dark-haired woman of 41, is a willing pioneer. Through her sorrow, she has become a believer in restorative justice, the philosophy underlying her meeting today. To heal, she says, survivors of crime need something beyond the punishments the courts dispense: the chance to hear the truth about what happened to their loved ones and "the empowering opportunity" to look the offender in the eye.

The goal for offenders, meanwhile, is a flesh-and-blood understanding of the harm they have caused.

"When you put a real face on the crime and hold them accountable, there's no escaping the impact," says Rochelle Edwards, a mediator from the state's Office of Victim and Survivor Services. Then, she adds, convicts "connect the dots in their own lives" to learn what set them on a criminal path.

"After that, they can't go back," she says. "They have too many insights, too many tools, to offend again."

O'Reilly's trust in the process is strong. But on this September morning, she has no real idea what lies ahead.