8-28-12: R. Dwayne Betts's Story from Two Worlds

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Betts-0828.mp3

This segment originally aired on August 10, 2009

When he was 15, R. Dwayne Betts was an eleventh-grader at Suitland High School in Maryland; he was taking honors English and AP U.S. history. When he was 16, he began serving a nine-year term in prison. Today, he's a graduate of the University of Maryland-College Park, a published poet pursuing an MFA at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, a husband, a father, and a national voice on juvenile justice issues.

He told the Baltimore Sun that he lives "with two worlds in my head." He talks to Sheilah about inhabiting those two worlds, and about his newly-published memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Survival, Learning, and Coming of Age in Prison.