for a while. how fittings -- the world gets taken in pieces. >> every generation finds beauty. >> we would like to hear from you. give us your feedback on twitter.com/booktv. >> up next reginald -- reginald dwayne betts talks about "a question of freedom," his memoir of serving and the lessons he learned. this is an hour and 40 minutes. >> how we doing? let me ask you this question. you mentioned the name several times. how would you like to be called? the best?

reasonable? >> blaine. >> it is good to interview someone like you. powerful stories in their about the way you articulate and the way you describe the scenes of what you went through. one of the questions i want to start with is what motivates you to read your book? >> in case somebody in the audience doesn't know who i am my name is reginald dwayne betts. i am named after my father but everyone calls me blaine --dwa t --dway --dwayne. i wrote a memoir called "a question of freedom". i was incarcerated when i was 16 for carjacking. and spent eight years in prison.

>> what motivated you to write your book? what makes your book different from other books about prison? >> i got arrested when i was 16 and never committed a crime and never been arrested before and i had a gun. the first time i had a gun. when you hear the news about somebody did x for the first time, suddenly trapped into this world one i didn't even believe my own story. i knew i had to be lying. no way i could have committed a crime of this nature and it was the only crime i ever committed. and explaining it to the rest of my family. particularly in light of the fact -- makes me want to holler. i read books about prison,

people in never heard of and i thought of incarceration and what it meant to the black community. still robbed somebody. so i decided i wanted to be a writer while i was in prison and part of the influence was a means of finding the explanation to my own and when i got the opportunity to write the book that was the main reason i wanted to write the book and also every book that i can think of about prison had been natural -- typically before prison, prison and after prison and when framed that way you have a good feeling about the person who committed the crime. in some ways they have done something that is commendable to get to the place to write the actual book but something good about the person who wrote the book you stop thinking about what it means to be in prison.

you stop thinking about the justice system and what it means to our country. i wanted to write a book that said what it meant to the juvenile in prison and a wanted the book to end with me just leaving prison. you had no idea what would happen to me because i had no idea what would happen to me and instead of a book only being a focus on me, start a conversation about the role of the justice system in our reach communities. >> you mentioned you were 16 when you first got your case. >> 16 years old juvenile and facing pretty much you would have been charged an adult a life sentence. something i took from your bookend hearing you now in the conversation we had is we have all these policies that affect juvenile and affect adults and policymakers are not necessarily

people like you or myself and i say that because being in the same -- walking the shoes you walked in the past i could relate to what i read. my point is often the stories that are shared by a lot of people who have been in the prison system are not necessarily echoed in a very positive way and would you have done is you took this native experience of going to prison but also you took ownership of what happened. you did explain thoroughly about what led to it and what you did when you were there and evidence for your book the struggles you have seen, disparity and inequality and population marginalized. now that you wrote the book what has become of all that?

>> i guess i could say one of the things, give me an opportunity to go to different high schools and colleges and speak on different panels and different congressional briefings about the policy issues that go into incarceration. when i got locked in a 16 my mom had no idea juvenile could be tried as adults. after we got locked up, i have a cousin the got walked up and what i wanted to do is -- how do you prevent crime but how do you confront what is going on. who make terrible mistakes. when i went to prison, no illusions sending you to prison. they for they, released at 25 i will be a young man when

released and they understood that when i was sentenced, and set in place into adulthood given that i was barely old enough to get a driver's license so some of the conversations i have now and trying to connect my experience it policy. it is one thing to talk about my experience and in some ways that is important because i have funny stories. i haven't told any but i have a couple funny stories what it means to be in prison. there is something to be said about experience. what it means to go through something difficult and it is relevant to be said about that and that is why i appreciate the idea of a memoir but there's something to be said about policy and looking at my experience. i could name national

prominence. and in time i want to be able to do that and in some way to connect my troubles from the policy issues are discussed. i haven't been able to do that. i do think the experience that i have makes me able to discuss things in a way and with new ones that somebody else may not but sometimes it is hard for people severe that because they always connect what i say to my trouble. they don't hear somebody who could possibly be an expert on policy issues. they may only hear a 16-year-old. they say i have a baby face but i am certain i am no longer 16 years old and some time there had to be a place where you ask somebody to be a part of a discussion that they could be part of the discussion based on the skills that they earned to contribute and not based on troubles that they dealt with.

>> interestingly enough based on conversation we had the other day we are talking about the challenges we have had with some of the success. sometimes people think it just happens overnight. sometimes people think there is more to what they are seeing, more behind the trend. the truth of the matter is obviously i have seen how nationally you have been involved in discussions and even as a consultant doing a lot of work not only community but across the nation and interestingly enough i had the honor to be -- a documentary called interested which joked about it because when i introduce myself, the honor and privilege -- and last month.

it is -- >> work and that wasn't me. >> working with the kids and stuff like that the bridge the we were joking about it but it is amazing because no matter how much we struggle, we have done good and how much we try to change our lives. critics out there and skeptics. my question is -- i had my jaundice but how has it affected you? where do they see you now? do they look at you as someone who is giving and can articulate and speak for those who don't have a voice? >> the idea of speaking for people who don't have a voice, i

don't like that term. i think it is not true. when i was locked up we were talking about -- must have been my second partner in prison and we were both 16 and the thing that devastated me was -- his daughter had been born right before he got locked up and got arrested for capital murder and is a long story but just to be clear he got arrested for capital murder in an incident in which the gun was never fired. that was standing sins 63 years and how can you do 85% of 63 years. that is a life sentence and i

remember writing to the aclu about this case and i thought to myself people writing letters to various organizations. when we say people don't have a voice a more accurate statement might be that people have voices we don't often listen to. this is on c-span. i know people who have cable, who have 5 inch color tvs and i used to watch c-span. right now at this moment there are people who could be watching on c-span. when we talk about people not having a voice people do have voices in ways you don't expect. i don't know how much i appreciated c-span giving me the opportunity to listen or speak while i was in prison but now thinking that i know people who could be seeing me speak and what that would mean i sort of do understand. there are occasions when i get an opportunity to speak for

people who don't speak for themselves and so a larger broader context. i don't think people doubt that. they doubt any thing, this is what i thought watching -- i had two children legally white, bills and when we do this criminal justice reform and try to stop violence how do we have a conversation that goes beyond stopping violence and goes to life building? and i think that is something that people don't necessarily want -- in the past have wanted. i haven't had many conversations with people in the advocacy community that went beyond me speaking about my experience in prison towards how do i make a life for myself and the free world and if i am devoting -- i met young people who devote their time to speaking at hearings whether it is local

hearings or state hearings speaking at community centers, talking about their experience and trying to change policies. i am glad this is important but what work are you doing to put food on your table and sustain so you can build a different life for yourself? at the end of the day there's a problem. i committed a crime. i have to figure out how to address being a young kid like me on the verge of committing a crime. how do we convince them of the important work i have done while in prison and since i have been out of prison going towards the building a life for myself, is a lot of ways independent of me having an opportunity to speak for others and to speak for myself and that is the work that citizens value most. i don't know how much citizens and people in the world truly

value somebody who talks. you have to do more than talk and people really value what it means to put yourself in any circumstance to get a 9-5 and paid those bills because one of the things i imagine drive recidivism is inability to get that 9-5 and to see yourself as a working citizen and i want to conceptualize yourself as a former inmate or whatever. >> i agree. something that kind of resonated with me in the last conversation about people in position to share testimony and talk about their experience in prison and the challenges they have had growing up and the challenges of being released and there is a lot of agencies out there, community organizations. all we are is a testimony.

i would rather save that. and learned that just recently. i am a 36 years old. you call it a mascot. that is -- pan and have the ability to help the communities to become a dissident from their own court values of the organization. >> it is difficult. difficult -- this reality and i met people who say this might not be the work for you. i don't know why you think they should have the right to sit at a table has spent ten years

studying criminal justice policies and get the same respect and authority and you should choose not to do this and unfortunately the truth is everybody in the audience is thinking why should i listen to you? all you have is your testimony that may sway some people to listen to you but going back to the question if all of this testimony and they will lean towards another person on the pound and i got out of prison and went to college, community college and the university of maryland and prince george community college. one of my professors said why did you mess up our name? i went to prince george's community college in maryland and university of maryland college and was a lot of work that went into going to school that didn't necessarily show up in my bio when i was introduced to some places to speak. when it came around and came

around for me to apply the fellowship for jobs, that work allowed me to extend myself beyond my testimony and not that i don't embrace my testimony. i do embrace my testimony. just that at some point you want people to respect you for what you have been through. i want people to not pretend they haven't gone through things as well because they say i don't know how i would survive and i am looking get them thinking your life has not been that great either. before we made some -- before we go back and forth and get questions from the audience. >> we should. any questions from the audience? >> things can at times -- we have to point out people turning challenges so they have to hear you laugh and make feel like you are enjoying it. if i have any questions if not we have a lot to talk about. >> if you have a question could

you come to the mike and share it? >> you got me thinking when you mentioned handful of funny stories, would it be too much to ask giving too much to ask to share with us? >> i don't think so. there are not that many funny stories. i just said that. do you have any? >> there were things i found -- i was kind of laughing. [talking over each other] >> because i was recalling when i was in prison, i remember that and there were some stories you mentioned that were not necessarily funny but laughing about it because -- >> don't have any funny stories.

i thought i had funny stories and realized i laugh at things that are not appropriate. i will tell a story. i telesat story. it is a sad story. if i was richard pryor this would be hilarious. in prison they have rules sort of set up to insure your safety. we had locks to protect your equipment believed -- cigarettes if you smoke so people wouldn't steal from you. it wasn't effective at all. but it is okay. you like having a club where you're caught in a dangerous neighborhood. you had a club because you think -- it makes you feel good about you being proactive. people would go in and saw the locks off or take everything you own. that was sad. one day we come in from the

wreck yard and it was a little guy and the thing about prison is you get to prison and some people deal with mental illness that you don't know about and this little guy with cuts up and down his arm, presume is the one place in america in which being a white male is not the lord vantage. which is a sad state of affairs but any way this guy with a little white guy and another guy had loaned him some stamps. he tried to give him his stamps back. the little guy when you are a little guy somebody -- you have to do something about it. he felt the guy was trying to say something in front of him so we were coming up the steps and the one really small guy who had cuts on his arm said hey. the other guy turned around. he hit him on the bridge of his nose with a lot in his sock so

he was stunned. then he hit him again and he jumped on him and was hitting him repeatedly. the sad thing is people were walking up the steps just stepping over the chaos and going about their business. no one was laughing but -- i don't think is that no one cared enough to stop it. it was just the two kids thought that everybody -- we had rose right now. to roll is not to intervene. i didn't know why they were fighting so i stepped over too and walked away and the sad thing was the guy was what is going on? the guy on the ground getting hit with the lock was i didn't do anything. i am not hitting him. and then -- that is not funny. i was thinking that the world is

just so backwards that to say that you are absence of fault in a situation can lead to you getting a concussion. this is the funny part. that part isn't funny. it is pretty sad. the funny part is he put his own lock a few hours to the next day and sent a memo the next morning and said as a safety measure they are confiscating all of the locks in the prison. so now you can just take my stuff. this is what is worse. they took all the locks but we still had -- it is sort of like you are trying to stop violence. this one guy gets hit with a lock so you take all the locks but you still have the adapters and the adapters were as big as walks if not bigger than locks so this is the insanity that comes with managing a prison.

when you push to try to explain the unexplainable you give up and the fresen wasn't interested in explaining violence to us and we were not interested in explaining circumstances of that particular event to the system but what the system was interested in doing was having a show of stopping violence. when i think of why juvenile sins go to prison with adults is that numbing affect. some people in the audience i felt bad. you are traumatized forever because i just told this terrible story of violence. i am probably traumatized in ways that i couldn't articulate because even then, i moved on. couldn't count the instances of violence eyewitness in prison and try to advocate for juvenile not to go to prison with adults it is not that i'm trying to argue that all men who are in

prison are dangerous and violent and predators because at one point i was a man in prison and wasn't always like 16 but i am trying to say -- this is what the book is about what i'm describing these different things. trying to go through this process what it means to come from a 16-year-old kid who had never been in trouble before to a man who could witness something like that and not bat an eye and keep moving and think about -- not saying i'm thinking about it so much but whatever i might have been thinking about. that story wasn't funny at all. >> i won't say it wasn't funny but being there, being in the situation in the past in prison, seeing people getting stuff taken and seeing gain riots and correctional officers beating, breaking people's ribs, i bear

witness to a lot of that. my own friends and even myself spending 2-1/2 years of my time of the 14 years i was in prison, we witnessed a lot of horrific things that leave an imprint in the mind and in so many ways even affect us emotionally and psychological scars and the emotional scars we often carry. i mean people who have been in situations and sometimes the perception of the people who walk in the streets don't fully understand that it is not necessarily that we chose to live in that environment or made all these bad choices but something lead us there. something we saw as a kid, domestic violence or being exposed to violence at an early

age becomes normalized. in prison is different. you mentioned about this young white kid that this is what he felt he had to. it was a survival thing and that becomes the norm. i mentioned earlier i have been spending a lot of my time playing cards or playing chess. lot of time and absorbing and getting to know people on a 1-on-1 basis and we get to know where they came from and i realize many times i was looking at a reflection of myself so i wonder. i am sure you have dozens of stories like that. what do you think? what level, what capacity, people who experience--even yours for example -- how you function? >> you made me feel like a real slacker because i spent a lot of

time playing spades. there was penuchle, chess, it was a quote about my father. this was the place--but huge stereotype, a sad thing when part of your life reaffirms stereotypes. prison was the first time i talked to black men of a certain age and generation over 35 which is disappointing in some ways. that was the biggest tragedy but also talking to them taught me how to deal with the trauma. i never met anybody in the vietnam war in july went to prison and never met anybody who had really dealt with substance-abuse issues until i had been in prison and meeting

people -- i never met anybody who -- you sort of judge people who were not fathers to their children. going to prison i met people like -- and was said because of their inability to function being caught up because they were addicted to drugs. and i began to understand -- i was a decent student. an honor roll students going to high school land i give myself praise for that because i didn't go to school that much. i was getting good grades. must really be smart. getting good grades without showing up. made me think i was better than this segment of my community that i side disappearing.

this poem called the colonel and it is about a dictator but in the poem is a scene with a dictator -- he brings out a jar full of dissidents that -- i was talking to a friend and disappeared in the united states and sort of a different context -- violence and drugs really disappear. huge segments of the black community and our own bad choices and i began to meet these men and think about this and ask myself about their stories and operate in the world in which i could acknowledge my own failures and their failures and still respect them despite that. how do i deal with it?

you just deal with it. if you get an eye injury, you put lattice over the wouldn't. i was playing soccer. you have to go -- with latino kids i knew in prison. somebody kick the ball and hit me in the i and my red not almost got the attached and had to see a specialist. it didn't get the attached but it was a star and a lettuce forms over the scott and for a while they thought was at risk of breaking, at risk of being detached if i hadn't experienced trauma to my head. i won't kelly which i it is just in case. how does my i function? the scar tissue has built over the wound and keeps my i -- my red not attached. in some ways we figure out how

to build start tissue over the trauma and that scar tissue allows me to function in the world today. life is not -- the book is in some ways sad. i have a beautiful light and two children. i am free. if i think about those things and live in the moment--i might not get a date to the from. >> you mentioned about in your book -- something i kind of like this kind of funny and sad at the same time. you encounter two latinos and it was like salvador -- you thought they were mexican. >> i didn't tell them that. i thought they were mexican but didn't say that to them.

i knew enough -- i am assuming their mexican because they speak spanish but i really did think that was ignorant. that was just my assumption. >> the part that you mentioned was they were talking -- you were wondering wondering what they've saying. you recall part of the story that you took a few years of french classes and mentioned a phrase -- >> firm the bush which is the quiet. my teacher used to say that to me. >> that is probably one of the ones that you remembered but you made it a priority to learn a different language. language that is not necessarily your own but the interesting part of the story is something i

see quite a bit easy mentioned often people think that immigrants are people who are different in that place. we have to know the culture and in other words your culture, they have to know a language and learn it. so often we become complacent where we don't cover-learn about someone else's culture about someone else's language and many of us never talked to a frenchman in our lives. it took two years. five phrases and i have never spoken to anybody who was french but you made it a priority to learn spanish so i am wondering that you learned spanish and what was the process of learning it? >> the main reason i did was a guy -- don't know if i can say is a name but he was a guy that

i was locked up with an this older guy was picking on me and -- it could have been the way you mess with somebody or could have been the way you mess with somebody because you are just being a bully and if you are the ones getting bullied or in the situation, you tell somebody stop and they don't and one day the guy was walking and i had never talked to him before. he was likely alone. mind your business. he was bigger than me but not that big and the guy messing with me was huge and looked like he did a thousand pushups and they. actually he did. he stood up for me and when he stood up the puerto ricans stood up and the other guy who was mexicans stood up too.

nothing happened. the situation -- he stood in the gap for me and i didn't know his name. it was i opening in the sense that i was a 16-year-old kid in a county jail. the only juvenile on the block and somebody stood up for me from all salvador. the kind of tattoos that when people have you say the guy is dangerous. i don't mean the cute tattoos. i mean -- butterflies -- flowers and butterflies. so i would go in the cell with him and talked to him and other guys and they would have to stop talking spanish because it would be difficult for the one guy -- was in difficult for him but for the is it was difficult because they didn't know english and three years later something else happened. i will teach myself spanish and

in the process i got up every morning at 6:00 or 5:00 and i would study for three hours or two hours depending on breakfast and before lunch i would study for another hour and before dinner -- study for five hours a day and talking to people on the block and it was difficult. the most ignorant statement i will never say in my life but as much as prism is a terrible place it was the most average place i had never been up to that point. i was in a block exit there were no white people. outside of that was the very diverse place. a guy from cuba, el salvador, peru, blackmailers from all over the country, states i had never been to. it is a sad testament to the conditions in cities that they

are able to get such a diverse pool of people to spend the bulk of their good years behind bars and not always for violent crimes or warrant incarceration. i would start talking to him and it was choppy and slow and i got to the point of conversations and it was good because i got to learn things about culture and got to realize the work that goes into learning something that we neglect and if you are an immigrant you are not even of the college educated class. you got something up on most americans anyway. having the languages when most americans we don't go to high school to learn another language. they just give us those clashes. expectation is never that we walk away being able to speak even rudimentary french or german or italian or spanish or whatever the class is.

i left prison thinking that was at and if my kid takes a foreign language in school he will finish high school and be able to speak that language or actually just has no choice. that is one of the best parts of the book to me. >> kind of like funny and an unusual for in. the other thing i wanted to mention that is really evident with the way i am listening to you speak and also some of the words you have chosen in your book, it is interesting in the vernacular they are using, the words we use to express certain things or describe the certain things that are not necessarily known, someone else hasn't been to the prison system. coming home not sure how difficult it was for you but for

me to enculturated and assimilate to different environments and still continues to be that. >> two things. how quickly i will answer this question and if anybody has a question you have to ask it now. when i was 16. the thing is when i got walked up nobody had a cellphone. three people had a cellphone in my city. a 13-year-old -- everybody has a cellphone. i was 24 and i was still pretty young. i still sort of came up in the video game generations of adapting the technology wasn't difficult. i spent a lot of time reading. i was fairly intelligent. i had some family support. i went to college and doors close on you when you have a record but if you have a college

degrees and doors open but you give yourself time to do other things to balance out the crimes that you commit. hy have been fortunate. it has not been that difficult. the hardest thing has been having that connection to the past. having that connection to the system and how to do something for myself and my family and people i do care about and be able to have a conversation in such a way that i am able to admit that i have been guilty and others have been guilty but guilt alone is not a condition to have such a drain on the nation's resources and try to have that argument but thank you for coming. it has been a pleasure. >> one last question because we still have a couple minutes.

right now you have an audience here and seen to be very captivated. there are also people watching you mentioned people who are in prison who watch the securitys. what message of hope do you give them? leaving here today right now what inspiration the give even to people in the audience? what hoped you give those in prison trying to change many times won't have the same opportunity you and i have and mentoring opportunities to be able to say i have strength and want to give a little bit of myself? >> you put me on the spot. i guess i will admit that when i was in prison i had no idea this was possible. it is important to expand what

you believe is possible. i didn't think this would happen when i was planning my own life but a few fundamental things. education has been important and humanity and education and education going to college and studying sciences or whatever or whether it is education which is real important. for people who are presidential don't have access to education. it is important to find ways to get in touch with the community. it is difficult. for me it would be difficult to get back and i will -- it is important to continue to reach out to the community and for people in the community i like to think you could go to the campaign for u.s. justice website www.cfyj.org. read a few articles and know more about the issues i deal with around juvenile transfer to adult court and equipped with

that knowledge you could become more aware of the issues and if it comes occasion to act on something at least he will have knowledge. that is the biggest thing people could do because when we talk about the prison being filled with people who disappeared part of that happens because we don't consider those men and women and as women too, and the reason we don't is we are ignorant of prison. and lots showed it -- won't speak about what the. such a source of entertainment and the public could be so ignorant and when it is a huge drain. right now in most states they're spending more money than they do