How this MacArthur genius is turning empty prison cells into redesigned libraries

Through the nonprofit, Freedom Reads, Reginald Dwayne Betts and his team are bringing a better library experience to incarcerated folks across the country.

It’s a Wednesday in New Haven, Connecticut, and I’m looking at slabs of maple on an assembly line. Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet and lawyer, is giving me a tour. His team is telling me that certain parts of the wood have started to swell in the July heat; they’re focused on sanding the pieces down so they can continue to build the bookshelves that they’ll soon install in prisons across the country.

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