Dwayne Betts: Coming of Age in Prison
By E. Ethelbert Miller
Editor’s Note: In 1997, R. Dwayne Betts was sentenced to nine years in prison for carjacking a man at gunpoint, use of a firearm during a felony and attempted robbery. He was sixteen years old when he committed the crime and sentenced as an adult. His story bears witness to the damage done to young boys when they are imprisoned with adult men. His story is also a poignant reminder that our beginnings are not our endings.
A year after his release in 2005, Betts began a book club called YoungMenRead at a local bookstore in Bowie, Maryland. His efforts “. . . to create a place where it was cool for black boys to hang out, speak up and be smart. . .” landed his story on front page of The Washington Post. After attending community college for two years, he received a full scholarship to the University of Maryland, graduated and delivered the commencement address in 2009. That same year he released his memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison and a poetry collection, Shahid Reads His Own Palm, one year later. He forged ahead with teaching positions and prestigious fellowships at The Open Society Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. In 2012, President Obama announced that Betts had been named a member of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. He found love and has added husband and father to his life’s oeuvre. He serves as the national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice. And these days you can find him on the opposite side of the law as a student at Yale Law School.
The arc of Bett’s trajectory from three felonies in 1997 to poet, memoirist, mentor, teacher, husband, father, and law student in 2015, is in many ways an exceptional story. Although, Betts might argue that it doesn’t have to be. He’s committed to using his life story as a platform to confront the underbelly of mass incarceration on American society, especially the unnecessary suffering it exacts on young men. His life’s work now begins at home — he is fathering two sons of his own. For The Imprisoned Issue, Betts shares with his friend and OF NOTE’s Advisory Board member E. Ethelbert Miller, the new paths he is forging as a student of law and as a father, his thoughts on what’s absent from the conversations on prison reform, and the toll on families with loved ones in prison. — Grace Aneiza Ali, Curator|Editor, The Imprisoned Issue
Even though we live in a world without borders, Black men are defined by prison and the restriction of their movement on this earth. Pick a city, select a state, then do the math. How many Black men are in the prison system? How many are angry and feel everything is stacked against them? Yet, somehow they survive the dangerous present. They live to become fathers and raise their children. They caress the neck and shoulders of freedom, turning her lips to their lips.
I see R. Dwayne Betts as a modern day Lazarus. Was it a miracle that he wrote a memoir? After I read his 2009 memoir, A Question of Freedom, I wrote the following:
With so many African American men “swimming” in and out of the American prison system, this new book by Betts is as timely as a long-awaited parole. We need to hear the voices of our young men before silence is replaced by invisibility. Betts writes about the crime he committed and his life behind bars. He offers no answers or apologies for his behavior. This is what makes A Question of Freedom such an honest and at times a heartbreaking book. It’s also a memoir that reminds us that the reading of books is still a way to loosen the chains holding us back. Betts was not political prisoner but his personal testimony is enough for all of us to question the politics of this nation. How many R. Dwayne Betts are still behind bars? A Question of Freedom is one book that might unlock your compassion.
