16-year-old spent a decade in jail—one smuggled book transformed his life and pushed him to help other prisoners
We all make mistakes and some might turn our lives upside down. While the damage can never be undone, what we do after that makes a massive difference. Reginald Dwayne Betts decided that he wanted to make a better life, even though he was confined to the walls of prison, The Washington Post reported. The teenager carjacked a man and was tried for his crime. As a result, he had to spend nearly a decade in jail. In his solace, he turned to a smuggled book to find entertainment, companionship and perhaps, even kindness. It transformed his life, inspiring him to help others.
Sharing a video on Instagram, he mentioned that he was “locked up at the age of 16.” It meant he lost all his freedom and even something as simple as reading a book was prohibited. “Imagine yourself as a teenager, 17 years old, in solitary confinement and you’re just calling out, ‘Yo, somebody send me a book,’” Betts recalled. He had to smuggle books through connections just to get a glimpse of a world that went beyond handcuffs and prison. “You don’t forget the first time somebody slid a book 40 feet across a concrete floor just to get it to you,” he recalled, in another video.
Other inmates would pass books through torn bedsheets and pillow cases. They found different ways to keep away their boredom, but what they didn’t know was that these pieces of literature were doing far more than just that. Betts realized it. “Somebody sent me Dudley Randall’s ‘The Black Poets,’ and it radically changed my life,” he remarked. Eventually, different books taught him different things. While one taught empathy, another offered hope and wisdom. He started reading and even writing, and began to pursue a love for poems. Released from jail 20 years ago, he has since completed a bachelor’s degree and earned a degree in law.
Betts has also been chasing his dream of being a poet. Seeing how one book changed his life, he knew he had to bring it to his inmates. He started Freedom Reads, a non-profit determined to bring libraries to prisons. “We put millions of people in prison. I want to put millions of books in prisons,” he said. He saw how much power a single book had when left with an imagination and confined walls. He added that though books became a source of comfort and distraction, they also allowed prisoners to imagine a new life for themselves. In a recent post, it was revealed that he just opened his 500th library in prison.
His motto — “Freedom begins with a book.” “I have always felt my freedom begins with a book. I learned this in a cell, where Freedom Reads began — where the notion of transforming lives with books began for me,” he said, a quote from another post revealed. James Davis III, one of the prisoners, shared the impact of having books to read. “To see this beautiful library. It actually influenced the culture in the unit. Every book is like a classroom,” he said. He added that different concepts like “How to communicate, how to relate to people, how to treat people,” all of it was revealed through books. Sharing from his own experience, Betts said, “It helps us, it helps them. Having access to something beautiful matters.”
You can follow Reginald Dwayne Betts (@dwaynebetts) and Freedom Reads (@freedombeginswithabook) on Instagram for more content on Reading and Humanity.