from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a remarkable story of redemption. r. dwayne betts was just 16 when he was sentenced to nine years in prison after committing a carjacking and robbery. he was released after prison and is sharing his story in the critically acclaimed book called "a question of freedom." we're glad you could join us. a conversation with r. dwayne betts coming up right now. >> there are so many things that wal-mart is looking forward to doing, like helping people live better but mostly we're looking forward to building stronger communities and relationships because with your help, the best is yet to come.

>> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance working to improve financial literacy and the economic empowerment that comes with it. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] tavis: at age 16, dwayne betts made a bad decision that would forever change his life. despite being an honor student, he and a friend were arrested following a carjacking and robbery for which he was sentenced to nine years in

prison. while incarcerated cement most of his time -- spent most of his time reading, writing. it is an honor to have you on this program, dwayne betts. >> doing great. tavis: let me go right at it. tell me what happened that fateful day. >> i was with a friend. we drove out to the mall in virginia and we were walking around the the mall and it got late and the next thing i know me and him were walking around in the parking lot and i had a gun. i didn't have a gun intentionally planted on robbing someone but i had a gun because the opportunity fell in my lap and told somebody i would hold it and i found myself in the mall walking around in the parking lot. next thing i know me and my friend carjacked this guy that was sleeping in his car.

i tell people we basically drove ourselves to prison. we were arrested the next day and pled guilty immediately and i was sentenced to nine years in prison and after 8 1/2 years i was finally release. tavis: let's start with the gun. you are an honor student. you have a mother who loves you and has taken good care of you. as an honor student, why do you have a gun in the first plate? >> it was the only time i had ever had a gun. i think part of it was just that it was available where i lived and part of it was that i knew people who carried around guns on a regular basis and thought they needed a gun. maybe part of that need stuck in my mind and it elapsed into something that was different with who my mother knew me to be and who my family knew me to be and i thought for whatever reason i should have a gun.

i was really fortune that it only lasted one night but i was able to recognize my mistake and reconcile myself to become who i was before that crime, i think, it has been a blessing. tavis: i want to be liberal in my thought process for a moment. by liberal, i mean as expansive as i can with my mind. you lived in a city where crime ran rampant. carrying a gun is a badge of honor even for an honor student. let me see if i can process how and why you had a gun on your person. i still got to make a quantum leap now to how you go to carjacking someone. >> me, too. i tell people more than having to make quantum leap, i had to make the sort of leap you couldn't imagine. i knew people who had carjacked before and who had died during

attempted carjacking. i had to ignore everything i knew about the insanity of the crime for the moment. i don't say that to justify it or to explain it but i say that so show that it was truly a moment of impulse when i was absolutely outside of my character and any explanation i give now can't be anything but an excuse because it really was the unexplainable. tavis: to your ears, how do you hear the statement that is not the kid that i know. that is not person that i know. i ask that because every day on the news we see some crazy story that breaks and you talk to the neighbors and the news media talking to reporters and neighbors and family and friends and everybody saying that is not same person i know and we, the viewers are trying to juxtapose what the persons who nee knew these individuals are saying with what this individual did.

when you hear that is not person i know. how do you hear that? >> i think i hear -- i recognize that young people get themselves in situations that they often can't pull themselves out of, having no idea how to get there and the thing that is most sad of all is that adults around them have no idea how they got there and i think there are telltale signs that the child is not able to navevate what they live around. -- navigate what they live around. when they say that is not the child you know, how can you prevent that from happening to his cousin or little brother, if we continue to do the things that we have done we're going to continue to get the same results. i hear it with a sense of sadness. the crime was committed and the punish identity is going to be metet outside. the whole thing is we need to be

more involved and allowing young people to see that the world is more than the balance around them. i knew the balance around me. it was the point of that life that that balance was more real. now that balance is so far removed from my world. i know it exists. i work in a community that is really balanced but that is removed from my world. my dreams and my ambitions are really in that balance even though i'm still steeped in the balance. tavis: i want to come back to your work these days. helping young people to avoid it and steer clear of it. let's keep moving here. i'm trying to process you having the gun. you explained the moment of insanity with the carjacking. tell me more about the carjacking and the victim. >> the victim was asleep in his car. it was probably a middle aged white guy. really somebody i never knew and never had seen before. i don't know what made me choose

to pick him as a victim except that he was sleeping in his car. tavis: did the car attract you? >> no, it was dark. it was night and there wasn't that many cars in the parking lot. the thing that i remember about the victim and i say this in the book, after the carjacking and after we pled guilty, when the judge talked and the prosecutor talked and the victim was in the audience. the truth is once the victim speaks after i pled guilty, there is nothing else i can say. it is hard to reconcile the fact that i made body is a victim. i think that's why even now, when i think of the victim, how do i approach the fact that i made body is a victim. some body a victim. there is really nothing that i could do for him to make that right. tavis: have you had occasion

over the years to communicate with the victim? did he want to be communicated with or avoid you? >> it is not that he avoided me. when i was first arrested i had a lot of anger. i thought it was someone else's fault that i was locked up. i had to let go of this relationship with the victim. after two years went by, i couldn't even remember his name and that probably was more hurtful than the fact that i made him a victim. now it is a nameless pace in the back of my head that -- face in the back of my head that started this whole prison. if he reached out to me, of course, i would talk to him and apologize to him but i don't think i necessarily have a right to search him out because again, i did something that is unexplainable and egregious. i don't think i necessarily have a right to say look, i graduated from college.

because i work in the community you could forgive me. i don't think that is necessarily the case. i would like the community to forgive me and i would like to make amends to the people in the community whom i haven't caused that much pain. he wasn't physically hurt at all. that is one of the reasons why in a sense i can still sleep at night. i can say yes, we took his car but i know we didn't physically hurt him. emotionally, psychologically, yes, but we didn't physically hurt him. it is easier for know sleep at night knowing i didn't hurt him. tavis: you concede it probably changed his life as well. >> very likely. i know victims. in some ways i have been a victim to my own insanity and more important i know family members who have been crushed by balance. tavis: tell me about how -- this is a very simple question that covers a very long period, nine years to be exact.

tell me about your years in prison, how you survived those nine years behind bars as a kid? >> really t. just the fact that i committed a crime and i was at the bottom of the tote m pole. i decided that i wanted to be a poet and a teacher and i decided that i wanted to be han honor to my mother and i just read a lot of books and spent every minute of every day thinking about how ykt i could make my life different when i was released. i worked hard and i was forbling nat to meet a lot of -- fortunate to meet a lot of brothers to guide me into manhood. took very long of my opportunity i had and created opportunities where none existed. tavis: how does a kid survive being thrown in with adults.

that's another show for another time butbut you were tried as an adult and got thrown in with these adults. how did you survive that? >> i think the truth is i survived it because i was a reader before, and i think reading and really understanding what literature did made me mature beyond my years, but also i had skills when i came into the system. since i wanted to be a writer, i had skills from reading a lot of books and understanding what was going in books. i was just fortunate and i was fortunate to avoid a lot of mistakes that bury other people. it was tough. i saw a lot of juveniles who didn't make it. some didn't make it because they were naive and some didn't make it because they were not strong enough. honestly some didn't make it because they were put in the wrong cell at the wrong time. when you say how did i make it, i think there was a whole lot of maybe insignificant details stacked up that created an opportunity for me to excel. not only for me to survive, the

truth is i had an opportunity to excel in prison where others didn't even have the opportunity to survive. you say how did i do it at 16? i can point to nothing else but luck and honestly the grace of god. i have proved myself unable to manage my own life by committing a crime. it was really men that were around me and the grace of god that helped me get through it. tavis: you sit today a college graduate, husband, father. you seem to be rather well adjusted yet we are told that our prison system does a horrible job of rehabilitating me and women. >> the prison system doesn't do a job of rehabilitating. definitely i make a point to tell people that. it opportunity with virginia department of corrections that created the man before you.

i can point to dr. cornell west. i can point the every book that oprah ever recommended and the poets robert hayden, i can chant a list of names. i can chant a list of names and people's whose work molded me into the person i am today. that literature helped me to define myself while i was at the place to help define me solely by those 30 minutes. i don't think it was the system in any way whatsoever. it was really because i believed that literature could do something for my life. for me that belief helped me believe that i could be more and help me to become more. tavis: were you in the same place the entire time or did you move around? >> i was a tour of the prison system.

tavis: how many prisons? >> five over nine years. from a medium security prison to the maximum security prison. it was 23 hours lock down. it was supposed to be for the most violent, vicious offenders. i found myself there at age 17, 18. tavis: tds one thing to be in prison and another thing to be in solitary confinement as a kid. how do you survive that? those same books? >> this is the thing. i had to worry about my own survival and make my mom not worry about me being safe. tavis: tell me about your mom. >> she was loving and got up at 4:00 a.m. every morning to go to work. she was the first voice that i heard and the last voice before i went to bed. nobody expected this. i was a good student the whole time. the crime crushed my mom completely and after the crime

she put herself in my survival and staked her life on how i would be ok. she wrote me letters. at the time i was locked up she couldn't drive so she got other family members to drive her to see me. she said are you in a cell by yourself? i said yeah. she was like ok, cool. tavis: i can understand that, though. from a safety perspective she knew her baby was going to be all right. >> for me, i was 17 when i was first put in solitary confinement. i dealt with it because i had an opportunity to read and not worry about the drama that was around me. tavis: to your mother, i think now any number of black men who i have come to neend to interview over the years who have expressed to me in their own way, the crushing defeat

they felt internally resulting from having let their mama down. i think of michael vick now. i'm glad to say he is back and getting a chance to do his thing again. i'll take your mail. bring it on. i'm glad michael vick is getting his chance again. that said, i recall when he first had a press conference. when he got arrested, the first thing he said was i want to apologize to my mother. almost the first thing he said. he knew that his mother was crushed by his behavior and i thought of how his mother had to endure this. tell about your feelings of guilt or shame or your words about what you did to your mama. >> this is the thing. my mom has always been my number one supporter. no matter what has gone on in my life from first grade to second grade to third grade. my mom is the one who expected me to excel. before i got locked up i didn't understand what that meant until

i had a child. but to come home and to think back on it, i know that i crushed my mom, right? but more than that, i sort of understand that i made my mom have to get up every day and think about how she went wrong and the truth is she didn't go wrong. i'm the one that jumped out of the window but a mother can't escape the sense of responsibility that she has far child. it is unfortunate too. because society says how are we going to talk about the single black mothers? but the truth is thate decisiony are never just raised by their parents and i think the only person who really recognizes how hard it is on a woman i think is the child because i saw how the whole world wanted to blame my mother and wanted to find what she did that was wrong when it was me that picked up the gun. tavis: it wasn't just your mother but there were blaming your father in absent thia.

>> they say the reason he did it is because he didn't have a father. they would blame an absent father is a slick way of saying because the mother isn't enough. i pushed back on that because i knew i was guilty. i basically knew i was going to prison but i could not stand in the courtroom, at the last moment, the only time i felt i had an opportunity to speak to the judge and i couldn't not say the truth the truth is i didn't commit the truth because i didn't have father. i commit it because i'm wrong. tavis: a bunch of witnesses thought they were helping you by saying you didn't have a father. you stood before the judge and said that ain't got nothing to do with it. >> i had to recognize my crime was mine. it was not my fathers or my mothers. my mother had bronchitis at the time.

i know that i crushed my mom and left her so brokenhearted that she couldn't speak on my behalf. everybody was saying i didn't have a father. they meant well but the truth was it wasn't because i didn't have a father and it was never ever because my mother wasn't good enough. tavis: nine years behind bars. you eventually get out. i'm fast forwarding here. you get out. you end up with a job, really your first job, so to speak. your first job is in a bookstore. tell me about that. >> so brother yau owned this book stoor. i had no intention of going to this gospel concert. it is ok but i step out of the concert because it was loud in there and i had just been working 12 hours making paint and i'm sitting outside talking to brother yau who was the owner

of the bookstore. we were talking about literature and he asked me what college do i go to? i don't go to college. where did you graduate? i didn't graduate. i felt like telling people don't ask me about my past. i told him i just got out of prison. he says are you a writer? i'm thinking to myself, that is not the follow-up question i expected just out of prison. i tell him yes. one thing leads to the next. i sent him some of my work and the manager of one of the stores says do you want to apply for the assistant manager job, not only do i get this opportunity but i have someone asking me do i want to work knowing that i have three felonies so i get the job there and eventually the manager wants to move on and do something else and i got promoted as manager and i started a book club there called

young boys read. i met my wife in the bookstore. it led to me being on the front page of the "washington post"." i began to understand how important books are in the lives of others. i knew how important it was in my own life but i didn't recognize how important a book is to someone else, some random person comes in and says this is a great book. read this. they come back to me and say you were right. what else? i'm really forever grateful to this man because again, a lot of doors have been closed in my face but he opened up the first door and that has paved the way for everything else. tavis: you get the job in the bookstore and make the most and go to college and graduate with honors and give the commencement when you graduate. >> that was -- i shared the stage with the director of the c.i.a.

tavis: how funny is that? >> the irony of all ironies. i'm sitting here at maryland university and get the opportunity to address 16,000 people on the importance of education. it was nearly 12 years to the date of me being sentenced by the judge. it was nearly 12 years to the date of me addressing the judge and it was a tremendous honor because the judge they told me thought sending me to prison would help me. i was able to tell them that. even no -- though no one exped me to make it to that points. -- that that point. i hold on to that moment. if you buy the c.d. and listen to it, it says introducing the class of 2009 led by reginald dwayne betts. tavis: you're in grad school.

that lady you met in the bookstore you married and you have a baby. life is good. >> life is good. i'm fortunate enough with the campaign for youth justice to go across the country and speak to these young kids who made trouble in their lives to talk about the importance of education. this is a movement that you need to join to educate yourself about what happens to our kids when we don't pay attention about how we can change their relationship with the justice system. really, i never would have thought that i would have the opportunities to do so much with my life. it is a blessing. tavis: it is a blessing. i have just basically scratched the surface of your story. i believe every race of people ought to be judged by the best that they have produced, not the worst. his new book is called "a

question of freedom." by r. dwayne betts. congratulations. glad to have you on the program. >> it is an absolute pleasure. tavis: that is our show tonight. catch me on the weekends on p.r.i. you can access us on pbs.org. good night. thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit a conversation with matthew weiner and jenna elfman. that's next time. we'll see you then. >> there are so many things wal-mart is looking toward to helping people live better.

because of your help, the best is yet to come. >> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance, working to improve financial literacy and the economic empowerment that comes with it. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions from -- to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> we are pbs.