Former Virginia inmate installs 500

Dwayne Betts had a familiar feeling when he visited a pair of Chesapeake prisons last week.

A corrections officer dropped some slang — referring to the books Betts was bringing for the inmates as "them joints" — that reminded him of the nine years he spent in Virginia's prison system after he was convicted of carjacking in 1996 at age 16.

Those memories include feelings of "extreme isolation," not having anyone around to take care of him, constant danger, and a shrinking horizon for what his life could be. His saving grace, the practice that put him on the path to graduating from Yale Law School in 2016 and now being a published poet, author and lawyer, was books.

But getting books wasn't easy. Most prisons have one library, open only 9 to 5 and on the opposite side of the prison from the housing units. Sometimes prisoners have to be searched to gain access, according to Betts, and they might need special permission depending on the areas they have to walk through to get there. Then to check out books, inmates must submit a request form that has to be processed along with the many others that have been submitted.

To get as much access as he could, Betts took jobs within the prison that were as close as possible to the library.

The path of least resistance, he said, is to simply not read.

As founder and CEO of the national nonprofit Freedom Reads, Betts has installed about 160 libraries in 27 prisons across nine states. The carefully curated libraries, aimed at deepening prisoners’ understanding of themselves and inspiring new possibilities, are placed in each housing unit so there are no barriers to reading.

Two Chesapeake prisons, St. Brides Correctional Center and Indian Creek Correctional Center, now have 12 libraries apiece with 500 books in each. The wooden bookcases are made by hand from maple, walnut or cherry. They are curved to contrast the rigidity of the prison walls and evoke Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote about the arc of the universe bending toward justice.

"We’re trying to argue that you can be gentle in a place as violent and dangerous as this by having architecture, by having furniture that we make with our hands," Betts said. "To say that this group of folks in prison — for whatever they’re in prison for — deserve this, is compelling."

"We do this work to fight that isolation," he continued, "to bring beauty into a cramped and dark place."

The books include "A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest Gaines, which was the first book Betts read all the way through without stopping, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "1984" by George Orwell, "The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois" by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "The Lottery and Other Short Stories" by Shirley Jackson, and lots of William Faulkner, who Betts said is one of his favorite authors.

It's not just the books that will bring enrichment to the inmates’ lives, Betts said, but the community they form around the books and their shared search for knowledge.

"I’m excited that people are going to have ("A Lesson Before Dying"), but we had a prison with probably 1,500 people — it might only be 10 of us that read that book but because we started to congregate together, three of us were in community together today," Betts said. "Us three means 10 other people want to read the book."

When Betts came to Chesapeake, he brought a friend who had been incarcerated in these prisons to show the inmates it's possible to make something positive out of their experience.

"The need is profound because the need goes beyond just having books," Betts said. "The need is about having this opportunity to build community with people in prison that help you confront what prison does to you."

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, [email protected]

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