What does it take to turn a felon into a philanthropist? To inspire a prisoner to become a productive member of society? To generate in a hardening heart a spirit of generosity and concern for others? In the case of Reginald Dwayne Betts, the answer was a book.
Betts, who goes by Dwayne, was an honor student in the gifted program of a high school in District Heights, Maryland, a predominantly Black school and community with its accompanying problems. He looked like one who might make it, who might break the cycle. But in 30 minutes, he destroyed everything he’d achieved. In 30 minutes, he threw it all away.
One night, this gifted, hardworking kid spontaneously decided to join a buddy in a carjacking. He’d never before touched a gun, but he had one that night. He waved it in the face of a man sleeping in his car, stole his wallet and his car, and found himself handcuffed in the back of a police car before lunch the next day. Within three months, he’d been tried and convicted as an adult and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was 16 years old.
The story could have ended there and nearly did. This 16-year-old kid went from a bare cell in a juvenile facility into the general population in an adult prison. He moved through it all without comprehending it. He’d never been in trouble before. When he asked for information or help, he was either ignored or threatened. He tried politeness, passivity, even resorted to begging, then realized these made him even more vulnerable. Not surprisingly, he turned to what he knew, what he’d seen around him all his life. Violence, as a cover for fear, as a means of power, as the way to make others fear you. He fought back, mouthed off, behaved like the punk he was believed to be and racked up time in solitary confinement, on and off, that totaled 14 months.
Solitary is about deprivation. It’s designed to weaken resistance, to force compliance and conformity by denying individuals human contact, simple pleasures, and adequate food, hygiene, and sleep. Prolonged isolation takes a physical toll, but even more insidious is the mental and psychological damage it can do. It could have been the end for this vulnerable young kid. It turned out to be his salvation.
Both bright and better educated than the average teenage felon, Betts felt the deprivation early. He’d been a good student and missed having books like he’d had at home or access to a library. He was bored, angry, and afraid. Somehow, the prisoners in solitary had devised a way to slide books across the concrete floor to one another, though they might not know what would be sent or who would send it. One day Betts yelled out, “Yo, send me a book” and under his cell door slid a copy of “The Black Poets.” It transformed his life. “I rediscovered a sense of freedom the system had tried to beat out of me, because of a book,” Betts said later. “I realized a poem can give somebody a whole world of hope [and] I decided to become a poet … After reading that book, I dedicated myself to helping other prisoners, and people outside of prison, discover the freedom blueprint that poetry, literature, and other arts can provide.”
It wasn’t an idle comment. “I didn’t think poetry would pay any bills,” Betts said, so his mother scraped together money and he took writing courses to learn to write in every form, like Chattanooga-born Ishmael Reed, whom he revers. He submitted his original poems to literary journals and collected a pile of rejection letters. “Poet Lore,” America’s oldest poetry journal, finally recognized his talent and published his first poem entitled “A Different Route.” It wouldn’t be his last.
Fast forward to 2005. At age 24, Betts walked out of prison and walked into community college (where he became part of the Honor’s Academy) and his first job at a bookstore, where he met his wife, Terese. He became manager and founded a book club for boys called YoungMenRead. He earned a full scholarship to attend Howard University, which rejected him when he acknowledged being a felon. The University of Maryland, however, regardless of his record, recognized his merit and awarded him a full scholarship. He interned at Atlantic magazine, taught poetry in Washington, D.C. and writing courses at Emerson College. His first book, “A Question of Freedom, A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison,” was published in 2010.
Betts also spoke at schools, organizations, and community groups all over the area about juvenile justice reform, and became national spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice. He was appointed by the president in 2012 to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. By 2016, he had graduated from Yale Law School and began helping other prisoners obtain release.
In the years that followed, in addition to working as a lawyer, Betts won a number of awards and fellowships from several prestigious institutions (New York Times, Harvard, Emerson, Guggenheim), and the two most recent catapulted his dedication to helping other prisoners “discover the freedom blueprint” from a promise to a reality.
Betts had started the Million Book Project with the support of the Yale Law School Justice Collaboratory. In 2020, the Mellon Foundation, an organization “committed to expanding and increasing resources for higher institutions in carceral environments,” awarded a grant of more than 5,000,000 dollars to develop this project, and Betts launched Freedom Reads, a non-profit initiative intended to bring a 500-book curated library (a variety of quality, award-winning books representing diverse cultures and ethnicities) to prisons and juvenile detention centers in every state in the country.
Prison libraries generally have limited hours and require permission to use. By contrast, Betts envisions books in every housing unit where inmates can freely access them. On the heels of the Mellon Grant came a MacArthur Fellowship (aka the Genius Grant) in 2021,“an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential” which comes with $625,000 award. The money was important, but the publicity the grants have brought Betts and Freedom Reads is even more significant.
The libraries are a set of two to six freestanding bookshelves, accessible from both sides, handcrafted from cherry, walnut, and maple to bring beauty into a grim and dismal place. Forty-four inches high, they’re designed both practically and symbolically; they allow the guards an open sightline and they curve like a wave as a visual reminder of Martin Luther King’s belief that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Their purpose is to provide a chance for prisoners to imagine new possibilities for their lives.
According to the Freedom Reads website, as of 2022, there were nearly 2,000,000 people in prison and juvenile detention centers. The goal of placing libraries in every housing unit is a massive one. But their progress is impressive. Since 2021, they’ve shipped 20 tons of books: 107,144 to prisons in 49 states, as well as 11,376 to juvenile centers in 39 states. Increasing media attention and public support is helping the program to grow.
While managing the project as CEO, Betts continues to write; to date he has published nine books and dozens of articles. “Writing and reading changed my vision of the world,” he said, exactly what he hopes others will find through Freedom Reads. The grant awards he’s received have given the project a good start. Like all nonprofits, public involvement is needed too. Countless articles are available online about Betts and Freedom Reads. Their website is freedomreads.org.
Reginald Dwayne Betts could be called “the exception.” He would disagree. He knows he could have been swallowed up in the system and become an angry, demoralized, hopeless person like so many (if not most) others do. In a prison atmosphere, it’s easy to give up. A better future is hard to imagine and difficult to believe in. Betts found hope in printed words, words he “carved into a kind of freedom.” They freed him from the despair and violence around him. They freed him from fear. They gave him the power to envision another way. “Freedom,” he believes, “begins with a book.”
by Carol Lannon
Betts, who goes by Dwayne, was an honor student in the gifted program of a high school in District Heights, Maryland, a predominantly Black school and community with its accompanying problems. He looked like one who might make it, who might break the cycle. But in 30 minutes, he destroyed everything he’d achieved. In 30 minutes, he threw it all away.
One night, this gifted, hardworking kid spontaneously decided to join a buddy in a carjacking. He’d never before touched a gun, but he had one that night. He waved it in the face of a man sleeping in his car, stole his wallet and his car, and found himself handcuffed in the back of a police car before lunch the next day. Within three months, he’d been tried and convicted as an adult and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was 16 years old.
The story could have ended there and nearly did. This 16-year-old kid went from a bare cell in a juvenile facility into the general population in an adult prison. He moved through it all without comprehending it. He’d never been in trouble before. When he asked for information or help, he was either ignored or threatened. He tried politeness, passivity, even resorted to begging, then realized these made him even more vulnerable. Not surprisingly, he turned to what he knew, what he’d seen around him all his life. Violence, as a cover for fear, as a means of power, as the way to make others fear you. He fought back, mouthed off, behaved like the punk he was believed to be and racked up time in solitary confinement, on and off, that totaled 14 months.
Solitary is about deprivation. It’s designed to weaken resistance, to force compliance and conformity by denying individuals human contact, simple pleasures, and adequate food, hygiene, and sleep. Prolonged isolation takes a physical toll, but even more insidious is the mental and psychological damage it can do. It could have been the end for this vulnerable young kid. It turned out to be his salvation.
Both bright and better educated than the average teenage felon, Betts felt the deprivation early. He’d been a good student and missed having books like he’d had at home or access to a library. He was bored, angry, and afraid. Somehow, the prisoners in solitary had devised a way to slide books across the concrete floor to one another, though they might not know what would be sent or who would send it. One day Betts yelled out, “Yo, send me a book” and under his cell door slid a copy of “The Black Poets.” It transformed his life. “I rediscovered a sense of freedom the system had tried to beat out of me, because of a book,” Betts said later. “I realized a poem can give somebody a whole world of hope [and] I decided to become a poet … After reading that book, I dedicated myself to helping other prisoners, and people outside of prison, discover the freedom blueprint that poetry, literature, and other arts can provide.”
It wasn’t an idle comment. “I didn’t think poetry would pay any bills,” Betts said, so his mother scraped together money and he took writing courses to learn to write in every form, like Chattanooga-born Ishmael Reed, whom he revers. He submitted his original poems to literary journals and collected a pile of rejection letters. “Poet Lore,” America’s oldest poetry journal, finally recognized his talent and published his first poem entitled “A Different Route.” It wouldn’t be his last.
Fast forward to 2005. At age 24, Betts walked out of prison and walked into community college (where he became part of the Honor’s Academy) and his first job at a bookstore, where he met his wife, Terese. He became manager and founded a book club for boys called YoungMenRead. He earned a full scholarship to attend Howard University, which rejected him when he acknowledged being a felon. The University of Maryland, however, regardless of his record, recognized his merit and awarded him a full scholarship. He interned at Atlantic magazine, taught poetry in Washington, D.C. and writing courses at Emerson College. His first book, “A Question of Freedom, A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison,” was published in 2010.
Betts also spoke at schools, organizations, and community groups all over the area about juvenile justice reform, and became national spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice. He was appointed by the president in 2012 to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. By 2016, he had graduated from Yale Law School and began helping other prisoners obtain release.
In the years that followed, in addition to working as a lawyer, Betts won a number of awards and fellowships from several prestigious institutions (New York Times, Harvard, Emerson, Guggenheim), and the two most recent catapulted his dedication to helping other prisoners “discover the freedom blueprint” from a promise to a reality.
Betts had started the Million Book Project with the support of the Yale Law School Justice Collaboratory. In 2020, the Mellon Foundation, an organization “committed to expanding and increasing resources for higher institutions in carceral environments,” awarded a grant of more than 5,000,000 dollars to develop this project, and Betts launched Freedom Reads, a non-profit initiative intended to bring a 500-book curated library (a variety of quality, award-winning books representing diverse cultures and ethnicities) to prisons and juvenile detention centers in every state in the country.
Prison libraries generally have limited hours and require permission to use. By contrast, Betts envisions books in every housing unit where inmates can freely access them. On the heels of the Mellon Grant came a MacArthur Fellowship (aka the Genius Grant) in 2021,“an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential” which comes with $625,000 award. The money was important, but the publicity the grants have brought Betts and Freedom Reads is even more significant.
The libraries are a set of two to six freestanding bookshelves, accessible from both sides, handcrafted from cherry, walnut, and maple to bring beauty into a grim and dismal place. Forty-four inches high, they’re designed both practically and symbolically; they allow the guards an open sightline and they curve like a wave as a visual reminder of Martin Luther King’s belief that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Their purpose is to provide a chance for prisoners to imagine new possibilities for their lives.
According to the Freedom Reads website, as of 2022, there were nearly 2,000,000 people in prison and juvenile detention centers. The goal of placing libraries in every housing unit is a massive one. But their progress is impressive. Since 2021, they’ve shipped 20 tons of books: 107,144 to prisons in 49 states, as well as 11,376 to juvenile centers in 39 states. Increasing media attention and public support is helping the program to grow.
While managing the project as CEO, Betts continues to write; to date he has published nine books and dozens of articles. “Writing and reading changed my vision of the world,” he said, exactly what he hopes others will find through Freedom Reads. The grant awards he’s received have given the project a good start. Like all nonprofits, public involvement is needed too. Countless articles are available online about Betts and Freedom Reads. Their website is freedomreads.org.
Reginald Dwayne Betts could be called “the exception.” He would disagree. He knows he could have been swallowed up in the system and become an angry, demoralized, hopeless person like so many (if not most) others do. In a prison atmosphere, it’s easy to give up. A better future is hard to imagine and difficult to believe in. Betts found hope in printed words, words he “carved into a kind of freedom.” They freed him from the despair and violence around him. They freed him from fear. They gave him the power to envision another way. “Freedom,” he believes, “begins with a book.”
by Carol Lannon
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