IT TAKES A SCHOOL

The sign on the squat brick schoolhouse in the midst of crime-ridden public-housing projects in Norfolk, Virginia, reads BOWLING PARK ELEMENTARY: A CARING COMMUNITY. Principal Herman Clark is one of those who does the caring, which is why every year he takes the parents of his pupils on a field trip to local attractions. One year it was to Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. "We got the chance to see the electric chair," he says. There have been visits to a prison in Chesapeake and a women's penal institution in Goochland. Two months ago, it was a walk through Death Row...