# Reginald Dwayne Betts

Reginald Dwayne Betts is an American poet, legal scholar, educator and prison reform advocate. At age 16 he committed an armed carjacking, was prosecuted as an adult, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. He started reading and writing poetry during his incarceration. After his release, Betts earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College, and a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School. He served on President Barack Obama’s Coordinating Council of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. He founded Freedom Reads, an organization that gives incarcerated people access to books. In September 2021, Betts was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

## Early life and imprisonment

Born in Maryland, Betts was in gifted programs throughout his youth, and in high school was an honors student and class treasurer at Suitland High School in the Washington, D.C. suburb of District Heights, Maryland.
At the age of sixteen, he and a friend carjacked a man who had fallen asleep in his car at the Springfield Mall. Betts was charged as an adult and consequently spent more than eight years in prison (including fourteen months in solitary confinement), where he completed high school and began reading and writing poetry.
Speaking at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in 2016, he said: "I was in solitary confinement.... You could call out for a book and someone would slide one to you. Frequently, you would not know who gave it to you. Somebody slid The Black Poets edited by Dudley Randall. In that book I read Robert Hayden for the first time, Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton. I saw the poet as not just utilitarian but as serving art. In a poem you can give somebody a whole world. Before that, I had thought of being a writer, writing mostly essays and maybe, one day, a novel. But at that moment I decided to become a poet."
In prison, he was renamed Shahid, meaning "witness".

## Education, writing, and activism after prison

After serving an eight-year prison term, Betts found a job working at Karibu Books in Bowie, Maryland. At the store, he was eventually promoted to manager and founded a book club for African American boys, while attending Prince George's Community College in Largo, Maryland. He later became a teacher of poetry in Washington, DC, and in 2013, he taught in the writing program (WLP) at Emerson College.
Betts is the national spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice, and speaks out for juvenile-justice reform. He also visits detention centers and inner-city schools, and talks to at-risk young people.
In 2012, President Barack Obama announced that Betts had been named a member of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
In 2016, Betts graduated from Yale Law School with a J.D. degree, and later began coursework for a Ph.D. in law at Yale. In September 2017, the Connecticut Bar Examining Committee recommended him for admission, after the bar had rejected his initial application for membership.
After Yale, he was awarded a Liman Fellowship, a program for Yale Law graduates to spend a year working in public interest law, and represented clients in the New Haven Public Defender’s Office. He also clerked for the Honorable Theodore McKee in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Betts is currently an Associate Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School; and a Visiting Lecturer on English at Harvard University.
In 2020, Betts founded Freedom Reads with a $5.25 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. Freedom Reads is a non-profit organization that aims to expand educational experiences for people in prison, including building "Freedom Libraries" in every cellblock in America. Betts serves as the organization's director.

## Awards and fellowships

* 2009: Beatrice Hawley Award for Shahid Reads His Own Palm.
* 2010: Open Society Foundation fellowship.
* 2010: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author for A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison
* 2017: Israel H. Peres Prize for best student comment ("Only Once I Thought About Suicide") appearing in the Yale Law Journal.
* 2018: PEN America's Writing for Justice Fellowship.
* 2018: Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
* 2021: MacArthur Fellowship.

## Publications
### Poetry
#### Collections

* Betts, Reginald Dwayne (2010). Near Burn and Burden: a collection of poems. Warren Wilson College.
* — (2010). Shahid Reads His Own Palm. Alice James Books. ISBN 9781882295814.
* — (2015). Bastards of the Reagan Era. Stahlecker Selections. ISBN 9781935536659.
* — (2019). Felon: Poems. W.W. Norton. ISBN 9780393652147.
* --- (2023) Redaction with art by Titus Kaphar W.W. Norton ISBN 9781324006824

#### Literary journals and magazines

His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including Ploughshares, Crab Orchard Review, and Poet Lore.

#### List of select poems

| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected |
| What we know of horses | 2011 | Betts, Reginald Dwayne (2011). "What we know of horses" (PDF). River Styx. 85: 37–38. Retrieved 2015-04-20. | Henderson, Bill, ed. (2013). The Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the small presses 2013. Pushcart Press. pp. 471–473. |
| A conversation | 2006 | Betts, Reginald Dwayne (Spring 2006). "A Conversation". Beltway Poetry Quarterly. 7 (2). Retrieved 2015-04-20. | |
| let me tell you bout the night i died | 2008 | Betts, Reginald Dwayne (2008). "let me tell you bout the night i died". The Drunken Boat. 8 (III–IV). Retrieved 2015-04-20. | |
| Misunderstood | 2008 | Betts, Reginald Dwayne (2008). "Misunderstood". The Drunken Boat. 8 (III–IV). Retrieved 2015-04-20. | |
| Soldier's song | 2008 | Betts, Reginald Dwayne (2008). "Soldier's song". The Drunken Boat. 8 (III–IV). Retrieved 2015-04-20. | |

### Non-fiction

* A Question of Freedom: A memoir of learning, survival, and coming of age in prison. Penguin. 2010. ISBN 9781101133361.
* Betts, Reginald Dwayne (2016). "Only Once I Thought About Suicide". Yale Law Journal Forum. 125: 222. Retrieved October 1, 2017.