← The Book Case
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- [00:01]
Sponsor Voice
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- [00:28]
Reginald Duane Betts
Foreign.
- [00:36]
Charlie Gibson
Charlie Gibson. And we welcome you back for another edition of the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie. Wow.
- [00:42]
Kate
I mean, he managed to work so much inflection. I'm not sure I can do that. But you are also welcome to the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie.
- [00:49]
Charlie Gibson
No, that's. That's sort of a professional voice that we both put on, right?
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Debbie Left
Oh, sure.
- [00:53]
Kate
We can call that professionally what exactly we have.
- [00:56]
Charlie Gibson
That's right. Well, it's amateurs pretending to be professionals on the bookcase. We're delighted to have you back. When we started this podcast more than two years ago, almost two and a half years now, our thought was that we would want to get people to read with suggestions of things that our listeners might like to read. And that's the purpose of this podcast. But perhaps somewhat to our surprise, this podcast has come to demonstrate the power of books. And there is no greater example of that than the person we're going to talk to this week. Reginald Duane Betts.
- [01:27]
Kate
Yeah. Reginald Duane Betts is the founder of a program called Freedom Reap. And what Freedom Reads does is it's a not for profit organization that brings a curated library collection to prisons that agree to it across the country. And I think this is an incredible program. If you're a regular listener to this show, and you really should be, if you aren't, darn it, you'll know that I'm in library school. And so I think what Freedom Reads is doing in prisons across America is we are a country divided. We are a country that, as Lawrence Wright said a few weeks ago, it's getting so easy to hate the believer and not the belief. And one of the reasons that I went to library school and that I believe in the criticality of libraries is I believe libraries are one of the last bastions of free democratic conversation in this country. If you want to take a walk for a mile in another man or woman's shoes, there's no better place to start than at the library.
- [02:29]
Charlie Gibson
Well, in a book.
- [02:30]
Kate
Yeah. And you. And the other thing that I think is so important about libraries is not just the empathy and other perspectives you develop, although that's so important in this country. The other thing that's really important about libraries is libraries are for everyone. They are for the homeless who might want to get warm and while they're in there, learn about getting some subsidized housing. They're for perhaps the undocumented new Americans in this country who want to learn about becoming citizens. It's about kids who don't speak English in the in this country and getting their first exposure to either literature in their language or literature in English. There isn't anybody for whom the library's doors should be closed. And again, I think Freedom Reads and Reginald Duane Betts is just is pioneering a new example of that.
- [03:22]
Charlie Gibson
Well, Duane, as he's known as Katie said, started something called Freedom Reads. It's an amazing program and he's going to tell you about it. But just as amazing, I, I, I just blows me away. His personal background. I lear Duane a couple of years ago from my friend Debbie left. I've always known that when she told me about him that he would make a great subject for the bookcase, for he is one of the most has one of the most amazing background stories I've ever heard of. So we're actually going to let Debbie tell you about his background. Debbie was the director of the John F. Kennedy Library. She ran two different foundations. She ran Feeding America, the nation's largest group of food banks. She was the Justice Department's lead pardon attorney. She was a highly successful producer at ABC News. In other words.
- [04:03]
Kate
Yeah, she's got some game.
- [04:04]
Charlie Gibson
She's had a whole succession of seemingly unrelated careers, but she's been successful at all of them. But Dwayne has told his story so many times. Debbie was the first one who told me of Dwayne's story. And so let her tell you about this extraordinary guy that we're going to talk to in just a few moments. Debbie, we'll get to how you know Dwayne and how you came to know him in a minute, but just tell me about him. Tell me about his life. Extraordinary life.
- [04:36]
Debbie Left
Well, it is extraordinary, Charlie. You know, Dwayne, at the age of 16, after having been a great kid and, you know, he committed a carjacking, something he had never done before, holding a gun, something he had never done before. And he was sentenced as an adult and slammed in an adult prison for more than eight years, including much time in solitary. What really saved him is once when he was in solitary, he yelled out, hey, someone bring me a book and a book slid under his door. And it was a book of black poets. And he read it, and he started doing poetry. And he became a believer that poetry and books could change a life. He got out of prison. He got a job working in a paint store. He went to community college. He went to University of Maryland, and then he got a Radcliffe Institute fellowship. And after that, he got into Yale Law School and many other law schools. And he got a law degree from Yale and was admitted to the bar despite his criminal record. You don't meet many people like that. And today he's a MacArthur genius.
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Kate
So how did you meet Dwayne? And if you could give us sort of the basics as to what you guys are doing together.
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Debbie Left
Sure. I just met Dwayne through a stroke of luck. I had been the United States pardon attorney, and in that job, I met a wonderful guy who works on bail reform, a lawyer named Alec Karakostanis, who's friends with Dwayne. Dwayne was awarded a $5 million grant to see through a vision of putting libraries and prisons from the Mellon Foundation. But Dwayne didn't know how completely to run a big project. And he mentioned it to Alec, and Alec said, call Debbie left, and if she's interested, she'll help you. And that's exactly what Dwayne did. I was blown away by her story, but also I was blown away by the possibility of installing libraries in every cell block in America, because I agree with Dwayne's vision that books can change a life.
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Kate
What have books meant to you in your life? And why do you think it's important to offer prisoners that kind of literary freedom? What does it do for them?
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Debbie Left
Well, for me, books spark the imagination. They introduce me to a world of possibilities that I might not even have considered. I meet people through books. I meet ideas. I get inspiration. Books. Not a day goes by when I don't read. It's a way of seeing the world, of engaging with the world and trying to make more of the world. And that's something every human being should have the possibility of doing. But in fact, most prisons don't have literature available. Maybe a few old law books, maybe somebody bought books by the pound, but nothing like the curated libraries that we offer. And what we have found when we've installed libraries is prisoners are interested in talking to one another, in engaging over books and helping other people read. It opens up the world to them instead of putting them in a cage and saying, you're worth nothing to society, and we don't care what Happens to.
- [08:07]
Charlie Gibson
You when you get out, kiddo. Thank you.
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Kate
Yeah, thank you so much.
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Debbie Left
Thank you very much.
- [08:14]
Charlie Gibson
So you can tell Duane is an extraordinary person. Began with a very generous grant from the Mellon foundation with putting together Freedom Reads. He is himself a MacArthur fellow. This is extraordinary for somebody who was himself so long in prison. Yeah.
- [08:29]
Kate
And I think one of the most amazing things about him is he talks about when he got out of prison, he could not escape its gravitational pull. It was difficult for him to get a degree, it was difficult for him to get a job. And he thought, thought, okay, I'm not going to be able to escape my past. So how do I reinvent myself for a successful future and bring my past along with me and uplift those I left behind? I mean, not to sound too Pollyanna, but wouldn't the world be a better place if everybody thought like that?
- [09:00]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, exactly. Well, books changed his life, and he believes books will change other prisoners lives. So we talked to Dwayne Betz about this program, Freedom Reads, and it was a really, really interest conversation. Dwayne Betts.
- [09:19]
Kate
Retinal Dwayne Betts, it is such a pleasure to have you in the bookcase. I want to start with what can books do for an inmate and what did they do for you?
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Reginald Duane Betts
You know, it's always challenging, right, because. Because I want to start by saying, you know, books can do for a person in prison. The same thing that it could do for a person anywhere. What a book can do for you in a place like that. It's not a place of solitude as much as it's a place of profound loneliness. A book could be a dinghy. You know, it could be a life raft. I mean, it could be. Literally, man, you know, I look out right now, it's like. It's like a complete blanket of fog. And. And that's what it means to be in prison. God damn if you don't feel like you're gonna fall into abyss. Every day in a book is that thing that tethers you to yourself. Really?
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Kate
Let's just start at the beginning. A prison says yes. What happens next?
- [10:19]
Reginald Duane Betts
I start laughing. Look, I gotta tell you something, man. You know, when I started Freedom Reads, the thing is, everybody said, yo, the people at the prison will say no. How would you convince the wardens? And I was like, you talking about the people who are charged with helping change folks lives, man? You know, I'm talking about the evil people who want to ban books. I was like, you're talking about the people who are closer to My experience than anybody that I deal with on a regular basis. You know, so every time a, a prison estate says yes, and we're dealing with the highest level of the Department of Corrections, we're dealing with the, the, the executive director or the commissioner or the secretary. And we've done, you know, southern states, you know, we've done Louisiana, we've done Maryland, we've done Massachusetts, we've done California. And so what happens is, depending on how it goes, but we, we first, we talk to the senior leadership and, and then, and then we just sort of have conversations from, from prison to prison, usually in a group of wardens. We find out who we'll partner with first. We may send a team of people out to look at the location and see what the physical layout looks like. And then we show up, like right now, my team is at a prison in California for this particular prison. And they need 25 libraries. We already have them built Connecticut. And so they go from Connecticut. And each library is a bookcase that sits about 44 inches high, and that's about waist height for the average height person. And it's curved. And it's curved because we think about Martin Luther King Jr's quote, the moral awkward universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And it's arc. And it's curved because there's nothing really curved in prison. It's made of walnut, maple, cherry, oak, hardwoods that are beautiful, that bring some life and some nature and disrupt a really sterile and demeaning environment. It brings dignity to the space. But we're going to ultimately sit that in the space. And books can be accessed from each side. And so that means that when you go and look at books, about six or seven people could congregate around a library at once. And that's what makes it a library. It becomes a locus of communication and of community. But those get packed up carefully in the in 18 wheeler and shipped, in this case, from Connecticut all the way here in California. It came to a warehouse where my team was already at the warehouse. They took it off of the, off of the U haul for the 18 wheeler, put it into the warehouse. And then like this morning, they would have gotten into a U haul or a sprinter van. They would have loaded the 25 libraries into that vehicle, went to the prison. The books would have already been shipped to the prison. And so the books would have been at the prison waiting for us. And then we go to one cell block at a time, and we set up the libraries and we invite the people with us. To help us. And those inside shell the books. And that's where the magic happens.
- [13:11]
Charlie Gibson
You mentioned something important. The bookcases are 44 inches high. Why?
- [13:18]
Reginald Duane Betts
It's. Because it's prison. You know, I mean, honestly, I. I feel like, you know, one of the things you have to do is you have to take a problem and you have to turn it into opportunity. And one of the things was, I really didn't want to have something that was putting things on the wall and putting it out of the way. And so then if you're going to construct it in space, well, now it's prison. And you have to think about not obstructing sight lines. But the point is that when they told me it had to be 44 inches high, I needed to figure out a way to turn that into opportunity. And I wanted to turn it into opportunity for beauty. And I made it opportunity to have the books on both sides so that it could bring community together. Because most people see a bookcase and it's not really, you know, in a space like that, you imagine it'll just be up against the wall, and you're trying to find a way to take up the least amount of space possible. We're trying to find a way to create a footprint, a footprint of beauty, a footprint of opportunity. And literally, when you look at it, it's a literal pathway to freedom. You know, it literally makes a path towards freedom.
- [14:17]
Charlie Gibson
So they told you it had to be 44 inches high. So what? So the guards can see over it?
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Reginald Duane Betts
Yeah, basically.
- [14:24]
Charlie Gibson
So, Dwayne, let me run through some numbers. First of all, when you set up a library, how many books in the library?
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Reginald Duane Betts
500.
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Charlie Gibson
And how many states are you in now?
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Reginald Duane Betts
13.
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Charlie Gibson
13 states. And how many prisons?
- [14:35]
Reginald Duane Betts
I think it's 35, 36. You know, 420 libraries.
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Charlie Gibson
420 libraries. 500 books. That's. That's over 200,000 books.
- [14:46]
Reginald Duane Betts
Yeah, I think we. A little over a quarter million.
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Charlie Gibson
Do you have metrics on how effective this is? And what would be your metric? Is it the usage of the books? Is it recidivism? How do you measure how effective each of these libraries can be?
- [15:02]
Reginald Duane Betts
So I think that I want to be careful about how I understand metrics and first say that. That things like recidivism aren't relevant metrics, honestly, because there are so many variables that lead to somebody's success or failure. So I want to talk about recidivism and freedom reads because one that suggests that we have any kind of way to follow people for the next decade or 20 years and two, you know, what others supposed to have. But what do I think about? So we got an impact report coming out, and one of the things I wanted to do was say, you know, we are trying to bring joy. We're trying to bring people joy. And how do you measure joy? And so we get a lot of qualitative data from the people in prison, and then we begin to say, okay, we believe these things are going to happen as evidence of joy. And so we're trying to find a way to build something that will allow us to track the books that are being read without tracking them. So you just want to track, like creating a device that will allow you to see the book left and it left for this much time. And then we creating essentially a neighborhood. And it'll be an internal community where people can have like, you know, communicate with us directly on, on an app that will exist within the, the software that they have in prison. And I actually don't even feel like we built the kind of relationship with them yet. They're like, wait a minute. You put Freedom libraries in, in.01% of the prisons in this country, Dwayne. So before you tell us that you want to study us and study the effectiveness of it, why don't you get a footprint of, say, 20% of the prisons in this country so that you can have a real randomized study anyway? Because Right now, at.01% of the prisons in this country, that number is so small that it ain't even going to give you any relevant data. All of which is not me making an excuse. It's saying that I will have a better answer for you after one of your listeners hears this and says, you know what? This brother needs $20 million.
- [16:56]
Charlie Gibson
So we'll take a little break in our convers with Dwayne Betts, give you a chance to hear about our extraordinary sponsors. And we'll be back with more with Reginald. Dwayne Betts.
- [17:12]
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Kate
When you first started examining how to build a collection for a prison, what was your curation philosophy?
- [18:25]
Reginald Duane Betts
Yo, I love this interview. This was. It was the pandemic, right? It was, man. I got to develop this collection and I don't want it to be all about me. And plus, I like hearing people talk about books, man. What if I ask people to. I created a focus group pandemic, though, man, that the virus is. What if I created a focus group and I just asked people to do the work for me? Oh, how would you do that? You send them a zoom link. Yeah, they don't gotta do nothing but click on it. You record it, you tell them to get them a glass of wine, a glass of bourbon, whatever they drink, water, tea, whatever, and let them talk about books. Oh, man. And. And it was magic. I mean, people would say things. I mean, and they would say things just like. Just like off of the cuff. And so. So I would listen to these conversations that I had basically with hundreds of people. And we built out the list with that. And I interviewed folks like, you know, Jill Lepore, different people I. My different friends that I really respected. And I got. I did. We did a survey and we sent it to people in prison. And we sent it all over and got a bunch of responses. And then we just went to work and we started picking books in Spanish. And then we got criticized for having a bunch of classics in Spanish. It's like, why don't you have books that are, like, in the original language or books by, you know, Spanish speaking authors? And so. And so then we did that and we brought those books in and it's been a journey. You know, I think it's been something of a. I was asked to be a keynote speaker at a conference for librarians, and I felt like that was a huge honor for me because, you know, I do think that, you know, curation is a matter of discretion. Right. And it's one of the real privileges of, like, you know, building freedom Reads.
- [20:13]
Charlie Gibson
I saw a quote of yours that said that prison isn't for growth. It is strictly for punishment and dehumanizing. How do you. When people hear About Freedom Reads. How do you convince them that this is so important to people who are in prison?
- [20:33]
Reginald Duane Betts
I think. I think prison is for punishment. And I like to be clear about that. Just because it's usually some harm that has happened. And if we're clear about that, then we can figure out what rational punishment is. So I want to be clear that it's for punishment. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have these opportunities to grow, because you will return to the society. And in fact, you still are within a society, you still are a citizen. And so what we do, what we build, why you should support freedom reasons, because there is nothing like this going on. You know, unfortunately, prisons are the places where we send the people that we want to disappear. So there is no budget for this. There is no budget for the libraries and prisons. We build a freedom library for the staff too, because you know what, most of the time, the staff, like I said before, are most like me in terms of having the highest rate of alcoholism, the highest rate of depression, the highest rate of suicide, of domestic violence among the profession. Like. Like that. We are the abyss. And it's not just people that's doing time, it's people that work there. And so when Freedom Reads is a light for everybody, I think this is something everybody gets behind, is something that's positive. We haven't had any pushback. And you want to support it though, because this is a part of the. This is part of our obligation and our duty as American cities that. That is abandoned. Completely, completely abandoned. I went to prison as a child. And you want to give people opportunities to invent themselves because we are not helping them do it. You know, I think I add value to this world and I add value not because of anything that the Department of Corrections did. And mind you, they didn't have a budget to do anything. So I am not blaming them. But the reason why you should support Freedom Reads and we are not an advocacy organization. We are not trying to get people out of prison, though. You know, we dabble in that on the side. We bring books to people. We believe that the greatest human invention is the story is the Gutenberg Library. And we believe that you have a right to have a brand new book in your hand before you die. That you have a right to have access to the books that transform lives just like everybody else on this planet or in this country or, or in our community or in our society will want. And that's what we do.
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Charlie Gibson
You must get some reaction from prisoners who write you. Yeah, who respond to you? What. What are they saying to you?
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Reginald Duane Betts
You know, it's two. It's at least two. But, I mean, I could talk about thousands, honestly, but it's two that's really worth highlighting, right? Three, actually. So a woman racist. And she's like, yo, man, I couldn't believe this. I mean, I come downstairs, I see this beautiful, beautiful bookcase. And then the books. Oh, they was new, too. It was amazing. Look. And they were good. I mean, in a place like this. And she's saying, then I'm looking at the books, and I look up and I lock eyes with somebody that had conflict with for weeks. And she said, I don't know what's gonna happen next. And then she say. The woman smiles at her and says, how you doing? She said, just like that, all the conflict dissipated. Beautiful. Over books, man. Over library. She said, I ain't know that they treated people like this in prison, but they do now. And I ain't know you could do anything about it like this, but you've taught me, you know, that's. One second. One dude racist says, man, this most amazing thing I've experienced. He was one of the judges for the Inside Literary Prize. He said, I'm doing life in prison. He said, all I got is this thousand dollars, man. The dude gave us every dime he had in his commissary. And, you know, I mean, the truth is that every day we got stories that animate the workforce. And. And the beauty of it is it's constantly people describing experiences that they've literally never had before. And there's something wondrous about having a smaller role and reminding us all, like, the power of a good story.
- [24:50]
Charlie Gibson
Yours is a pretty damn good story. And I love the fact that there's somebody who I know well, who's rather famous actually, who said, you know, if you just have one or two really great ideas in life, you can make a difference. And this was a great idea. It's just simply a great idea. And that you're devoting your life to making it happen and therefore making people realize that they haven't disappeared, that they. That they. That they can find meaning in wherever they are. That's pretty special, Dwayne. It's pretty special. Thank you.
- [25:31]
Reginald Duane Betts
Thank you.
- [25:32]
Charlie Gibson
You take care. So this program, admirable as it is, it's still very limited because, you know, he only has enough money to get into X number of prisons. And. And there are many, many, many more to go. And each one, since he wants these libraries to be in each Cell block. Each prison requires multiple libraries. Yeah, it's really. It's really amazing. And foundations have backed him, and we hope, you know, it's very difficult to come up with a metric as to how successful this may be, but it's certainly admirable just in the fact that the program exists.
- [26:11]
Kate
Well, I think he's got the right attitude, which is, you know, we need to get a larger footprint for us to really understand the metric that we're looking for. I think it's also amazing that he believes the outreach for these libraries not to just be the prisoners, but also the staff of the prisons. I would imagine that prisons can be very difficult workplaces. They can probably make you feel like you're getting the soul sucked right out of you. That's sort of the point of the whole structure. So the idea that this also provides joy and resources and opportunities for the staff, I think is terrific. You know, libraries haven't always been terrific agents for social change. It took a long time for libraries to desegregate, and there's a lot of, you know, self censoring of books going on in libraries across the country because librarians don't necessarily want to confront book banners. So libraries have not necessarily always been on the forefront of social change. But that being said, they can cause a huge amount of social change. They can change lives, they can help you to grow, they can help you to be better people. And as I said at the beginning, they can also help you with empathy and understanding the points of view of others, which I don't think has ever been more important in this country than right now. So, you know, libraries, libraries, libraries, sis boom bah. Like, I am a fan. I am, I am a big rah rah fan. So the fact that he's doing this work in some of the toughest places in the country, I could not be a bigger admirer of both Debbie and Dwayne and their mission.
- [27:43]
Charlie Gibson
Maybe we should rename the podcast Kate on a Soapbox.
- [27:49]
Kate
I did get a little soapboxy in this episode. I swear, I'm not this. I'm really a very fun person.
- [27:57]
Charlie Gibson
Well, it's. It's interesting that you, you know, I, I look at this as, here's a really amazing guy who has this extraordinary background doing something that is very particular and very directed toward prisons. And you see it in a larger scope. You see it as just part of the real necessity for libraries in all places in this country. So it's interesting that we look at it from a different standpoint. But whichever viewpoint you take. What Dwayne Betts is doing is really extraordinary and he is to be commended for doing so. He goes around the country and speaks. He speaks in prisons. He sets these libraries up in prisons. He employs people who have been in prison to do this. He's really doing an amazing job.
- [28:38]
Kate
Yeah. If you want to learn more about their mission, you know, take a look@freedom reads.org they do amazing work and they are hoping to continue to grow.
- [28:46]
Charlie Gibson
So we will let you again know about the folks who make this podcast possible. And then we have a coda from Dwayne Betts.
- [28:54]
Kate
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producers are Laura Mayer and Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Taylor Rhodes, Amanda McMaster and Sarah Russell at Good Morning America and Josh Cohen, Asal Asanapour, Meg Fierro and Amira Williams at ABC Audio.
- [29:16]
Reginald Duane Betts
Freedom begins with a book.