The story of Stephen Pitcairn's murder ("A promising life is cut short," July 27) elicits feelings of outrage and profound sadness, but much worse still, it elicits despair. As I consider the contrast between the many accomplishments in his young life and the details of his death, hope sinks like a stone.

Where is the hope for Baltimore? What is the incentive for criminals not to commit crimes? Can we hope that prison will lead to a reformed life? Surely not, for prison is little more than a safer environment for gangs and gang mentality, for street culture, to thrive, a holding tank at best; and release from prison, statistically speaking, is merely an opportunity to commit more heinous acts leading to longer sentences. No, I can find no hope in the criminal justice system.

So where else? In man's love for his fellow man? What frightens me most about our city is that beneath the bright lights and glitz of our world-famous Inner Harbor, our charming cobblestone streets and historic neighborhoods, our fabulous hospitals and universities, beneath it all there is a seething monster, an amorphous, angry force which raises its frightening head and claims as its victims the Stephen Pitcairns and Zach Sowers of our city. What would we hear if we could quiet that force, if we could quell that monster? We might hear the cries of all the bereaved mothers, of a bereft mother in Florida who had to endure the most unthinkable of all horrors, the sound of her own son being murdered.

Myra MacCuaig, Towson