Scum.

That’s how some may view prison inmates: People whose contemptible deeds have severed them from society, and who deserve nothing but years in squalor.

But a group of students thinks differently and is making strides to provide pen pals for prison inmates.

A Lone Cry for Help is raising funds for literacy tools for prisoners, enabling them to communicate with the outside world and practice skills in reading and writing.

The group’s actions deserve notice because they focus on an often overlooked or despised segment of society.

Yes, many of these individuals have done some truly bad things.

But few are on life sentences. Many eventually will rejoin society, and their time in prison should have some rehabilitating effect, lest we want them to quickly fall back into crime.

A 2002 Justice Department study revealed 67 percent of former state prison inmates released in 1994 committed at least one serious new crime within the next three years.

Of course, these numbers should come as little shock – time in prison too rarely has any reformative quality.

The literacy group, as well as some universities that have offered degree programs at various prisons, provide something aside from the grim despondence often sweeping across prisoners’ minds.

This is a stark departure from a “fire and brimstone” conception of prison, wherein prisoners deserve a wealth of misery and suffering as to redress their crimes.

But these people, despite some atrocious actions, are not hopeless.

Literacy programs offer something positive on which prisoners can focus. Positive re-enforcement, and the opportunity for expression, provides a glimmer of hope.

And this can lead to more substantial effects, extending beyond dread of returning to prison. It could provide rejuvenation.

For many prisoners, that’s what they need – and for too long it has been denied.

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