Press Kit

All I can say is that I think Reginald Dwayne Betts is amazing. Everything is stacked against you when you spend your youth locked up. So many years of education and early job experiences missed. The emotional scars of eight years in confinement. The social stigma associated with being a convicted violent offender. That he’s overcome all that to help so many people blows my mind.

In the carceral world, where design isn’t typically a consideration, Freedom Reads’ libraries are a notable exception. The bookshelves don’t hang on a wall—they sit, hand-built and curved, as locus points inside a facility’s housing units.

Freedom Reads libraries transform prison spaces, filling them with inspiration and hope

When you pick up a book, [it] helps you think about what it means to be alive in the world. Prisoners need to understand their importance beyond their crimes.

Freedom Reads has brought numerous authors into prisons to meet inmates, many of whom have never met a professional writer before.

The design of the Freedom Library aims to challenge ideas around: ‘Who deserves dignity and beauty?’ and ‘Who deserves access to craft?'

The selection is broad as one would expect of any library. So there’s Sula by Toni Morrison, and works by James Baldwin, William Faulkner and Derek Walcott.

We call them freedom libraries to remind us of the urgency of it all, and we carve the shelves into curves to suggest a universe that bends toward justice.

It all started with someone — [Betts] never saw the person's face — paying it forward to a terrified teenager looking for a greater purpose.

Betts has thought out every aspect of the libraries. Not just the books, but also the reclaimed wood that will hold them.