With his book-tour stop at the Orange County Jail in Florida, crime writer Dennis Lehane became the latest of a dozen authors to visit a class where literature is used to teach teenage boys that, as their program coordinator put it, “they don’t have to be dirtbags.” “Ernest J. Gaines was the first author to come, in 2001, after the group read ‘A Lesson Before Dying’ (Random House), about a black youth sentenced to death. He has visited twice. Brian Jacques, author of the ‘Redwall’ series, about mice who fight off evil rats, foxes and other predators, has also visited twice, on a book tour for his publisher, Penguin, from England.”