REHABILITATION

Editor, Times-Union:

This article is to let the Warsaw community know how prison doesn't
rehabilitate a person. However, they do offer a wide variety of
courses to help the rehabilitation process, but these courses can be
manipulated just to be put on one's prison packet. Rehabilitation
comes from within the person, a desiring need for a better and
productive life. One does not need to come to prison for
rehabilitation.

However, being in prison gives a person a chance to look deep within
and to see themselves with no interruptions, from society or loved
ones. For I know! I'm currently serving a 10-year prison term for
dealing cocaine. I was sentenced on Nov. 10, 1999, which I thought
was the worst turn that ever took place in my life. In the process I
lost a very special and loving girlfriend and was pulled out from my
environment and away from my loved ones. The steps that started my
rehabilitation started with depression and a deep grieving process
which lasted for several months. After these emotions subsided, I had
a deep compassion to learn a different way of life. Dealing drugs was
not the life I wanted to return to. Dealing or using drugs only
leaves a person with two options: dead or in prison. This is not a
way of life!

Education is the only key to a wide variety of positive lifestyles.
Since I've been here, I've obtained my G.E.D. with high scores,
earned a minister's license, an honorary degree in divinity, two
diplomas in Biblical studies and will be completing a vocational
trade called Business Computer Applications. I also will be enrolling
in a paralegal course in September, after completing my vocational
trade.

What I thought was the worst turn in my life turned out to be the
best. I recommend to the ones that are involved in drug activity that
they pull themselves away and start the rehabilitation process within
themselves before they end up coming to a place where they have no
choice, prison. The younger generation of Warsaw and other
communities need to re-arm themselves with education, not with guns
and drugs. Remember, education is the key that will unlock a wide
variety of doors for a better and productive life.

Charles F. Robinson I
Westville Correctional Facility