Earlier this month there was a very fine article appearing as a Special to the Salisbury Post. The writer is an inmate at Piedmont Correctional Institution in Salisbury. The May 4 article was titled, “We reap what we sow, especially in crime.”

I was impressed with the thoughtfulness and force of the article and with how very well the writer expressed his deep and considered thoughts. His crime was committed when he was only 17 years old, and this article was being written 20 years later.

He urges those who are tempted to do similar misdeeds to put aside drugs and guns and instead to “lift up your dreams to be someone you can admire and respect when you see your own reflection.” Good advice, I’d say, to any of us.

As I read and re-read the article, I thought of the countless potential miscreants out there who would never see this article so well-crafted by one of their own. They don’t see the community newspaper, or if they do, they read only the headlines and the sports pages and comics, if indeed they are educated well enough to be able to read at all.

Crime will be ever with us, but perpetrators of crime can be changed into law-abiding citizens by giving them accessible opportunities to improve themselves. That can start with making sure all of us out there are taught how to read and thereby come to realize that other people care about us.

The writer of the article concludes, “Change is possible. Lives change and miracles happen.” I’d say it’s up to us.

— Henry H. Brown

Salisbury