Top Quotes & Sayings by 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 sentenced to nine years in prison. He started reading and writing poetry during his incarceration. "A single book, Dudley Randall's The Black Poets, slid under my cell in the hole, introduced me to the poets that had me believing words can be carved into a kind of freedom.” 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. He is currently working on a PhD in Law at Yale University.