Tiny libraries are a big deal at the ACI. Here's how they are changing lives.

CRANSTON – For 26 years, the walls of the Adult Correctional Institutions were Steven Parkhurst’s home.

Last week, Parkhurst returned to pay it forward, in a sense, to the men who helped shape him as he grew from teenager to adult. He was greeted by warm handshakes and applause as he visited the prison as a free man in his new role as a program coordinator for Freedom Reads, a first-of-its-kind organization whose mission is bringing libraries to people in prison so they can transform hopelessness into possibility.

“I really learned compassion and empathy through you guys,” Parkhurst, now 48, said to the 100 or so men gathered last week in the cafeteria of the medium security unit at the ACI.

Freedom Reads brought 500 books and free-standing micro-libraries to the men in medium security and to the women’s unit, along with a performance by Reginald Dwayne Betts, founder of Freedom Reads, who at 16 was charged as an adult for carjacking a man in Maryland and sentenced to nine years in prison.

“We’re trying to build a community around books,” Parkhurst said. “Literature, like words, has the ability to bring things to life.”

No longer would the inmates have to sign a book out at the prison library at specified times. A library would be outside their cell doors.

`I think about books’

Betts, a poet and now a Yale Law School-trained lawyer, told of being a teenager in solitary confinement.

“What do you think about when you hear the word prison? Some say violence,” Betts said. “But, me, when I hear the word prison, I think about books – a book slid to me under the door.”

When Betts asked if anyone could spare a book, a stranger slid The Black Poets, an anthology edited by Dudley Randall, across the concrete with the unspoken agreement he would pass it along it to someone else if they needed it. That book began his evolution into a poet and gave him hope amid bleakness as he copied down every word, knowing that one day he’d have to hand it off.

“I remember they told me: 'Who do you want to be?' This is the homework that matters,” Betts said.

He began catching college degrees like “a felony,” he quipped, eventually earning a master’s of fine arts in poetry and a law degree from Yale. He is now a Ph.D. in law candidate at Yale.

`Felon': Poems from prison and beyond

Betts read from his most recent book of poetry, "Felon," and copies were given to each man in attendance. His works explore the world of prison, the fallout from incarceration and the criminal justice system in American society.

“Name a song that tells a man what to expect after prison. Am I still a felon after prison?” Betts said.

A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, Betts’s latest collection of poetry received the American Book Award and an NAACP Image Award.

“There is no word for how much we’ve lost in prison,” Betts said.

Founded in 2020, Freedom Reads works to place millions of books into prisons by installing one Freedom Library at a time in every prison dormitory and housing unit in the United States based on the belief that books are essential to imagining a new life for yourself.

So far, more than 77,395 books have been distributed in prisons in 40 states. Another 9,430 have been sent to juvenile detention centers in 34 states.

Since becoming a lawyer, Betts has been involved in getting six men out of prison, including three men sentenced to life, one with two life sentences, one serving 26 years and one serving 53 years.

`I see your journey'

Betts and Parkhurst took questions from the men.

One, a youthful offender, commented that Parkhurst served as a motivator for him.

“I see your journey,” he said.

Parkhurst was convicted as a teenager of murder in the shooting death of 20-year-old Trevor Ramella in North Smithfield in 1992. He was sentenced to serve life in prison plus 20 years.

In 2017, Parkhurst challenged his sentence in federal court, arguing it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and failed to consider the impetuosity and recklessness of youth.

"I worked my [expletive] off for a second chance," he said.

In 2019, he was granted parole after the board revised its guidelines to take into consideration age, immaturity and rehabilitation efforts in weighing whether to release offenders convicted of crimes committed before age 18.

Parkhurst had previously appeared before the board with a dozen letters of support, a clean prison record and a long list of in-prison accomplishments. Those include earning associate’s and bachelor’s degrees and embarking on a MBA program through Adams State University. He had trained 14 dogs to serve people who have disabilities and spoken to hundreds of high school students about the price of crime.

The hardest part about rejoining society outside the walls

Another man asked: What is the biggest obstacle to re-entering society?

“People who are well-meaning only know you for your crime,” Betts said. He urged the men to extend grace to people who view them as somehow “different” from them and gently teach them otherwise.

Is it hard to stay out of trouble?

Betts said he spent a lot of time thinking about who he owed, including his mother and the men with whom he did time.

“Life is hard, and we make mistakes,” Betts said. “I needed another story … I needed to be more than a state number.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Freedom Reads, bringing books to prisons nationwide, arrives at ACI