BALTIMORE — The first book DL picked up was “Punching the Air,” a novel he says is about a youngster who had to go to court for beating someone up, but wanted people to see him as more than a “criminal”. The main character wanted to be seen as an artist, wanted people to “see his goodness,” DL said.
Even before he finished it, he chose a second one, written by former President Barack Obama.
The 18-year-old said he often reads books about action or guns but “wanted something different”.
Young people like DL who are incarcerated at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center now have their choice of titles in small libraries within their housing units, thanks to the nonprofit Freedom Reads, which seeks to install them in the nation’s prisons and detention centers.
Proponents called it a “game-changing” change that widens access to reading materials for young people at the center. Starting in June, they can browse titles, browse books, and read whatever they want, with dozens of books available in their units.
The Baltimore Sun agreed not to name the three 18-year-olds interviewed for this story because they have pending cases stemming from charges filed when they were minors.
A curated selection at the Gay Street Juvenile Center balances classics with new titles, combining fiction, poetry and other genres. On a shelf, Jeannette Walls’ memoir “The Glass Castle” was accompanied by the existentialist classic “The Stranger” by Albert Camus and a 2022 urban fantasy titled “Ballad & Dagger” by Daniel José Older. Other shelves held JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and award-winning selections for young adults.
Freedom Reads founder Reginald Dwayne Betts sees access to books as a way to help people in prison imagine a new future and remember their dignity.
Betts served eight years in Virginia prisons for a carjacking conviction at age 16 and recalls books were essential in those days. Since his release in 2005, the poet and lawyer has become a published author, a graduate of Yale Law School and a fellow of the MacArthur Foundation.
“Writing and reading are a pathway to thinking and to understanding the world,” he said.
Betts, who grew up in Suitland, toured the Baltimore Youth Detention Center and a state prison in Jessup on June 8, the first facilities in Maryland equipped with Freedom libraries. So far, 172 libraries have been installed in 30 prisons and jails in 10 states, according to the nonprofit’s website.
The Liberty Libraries’ shelves are curved, in homage to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s idea that “the arch of the moral universe…bends toward justice”, and double-sided to encourage Brotherhood. The titles were chosen carefully through focus groups, surveys and interviews with academics, Betts said.
According to Morgan Wright, spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Corrections, the library at Dorsey Run Correctional Facility, a minimum-security prison in Jessup, will make browsing possible for people who work during regular working hours. the library. The agency also hopes to install a Liberty Library at the Central Maryland Correctional Facility in Sykesville.
“Education has been proven to reduce recidivism, and often education starts with someone picking up a book,” agency secretary Carolyn J. Scruggs said in an emailed statement. .
New Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi, who said he lobbied for libraries to be housed in Baltimore’s juvenile center, told The Sun that institutionalization can ‘unnecessarily’ rob people of their individuality and their humanity. Libraries, he said, are a way to soften and humanize facilities and “tie” young people to the real world. He hopes to bring libraries to every juvenile facility in the state.
“I want these young people to stay attached to the real world, not detach from it and become inmates,” Schiraldi said. “I don’t want to teach them to become adult prisoners. I want to teach them to become scholars.
Unit 32 at the Baltimore Youth Detention Center, which houses seven people including DL, already has avid readers.
DF first picked up a book by Rick Riordan and is now on his second by the fantasy author. Riordan was a DF favorite when he was younger, and he’s returned to his books recently to help “pass my time”.
He is considering obtaining Tolkein’s “The Hobbit” on Betts’ recommendation, he said, and is also considering writing to Betts asking for additional books.
KW picked up “Fake ID” and “The Crossover,” the latter of which was made into a basketball movie. KW was surprised to find the book contained poetry — “nothing wrong with that,” he added.
All three teens agree that the books are welcome additions that help them fill dead time, read other stories and experiences, keep their minds off conflicts with other people, and stay out of trouble.
Books can help broaden people’s minds, DF said: “Everyone has the potential to be someone somewhere.”
DL, who wants to become a landscaper because he enjoys working outdoors in all weathers, said the books could help people change their actions, achieve their goals and make the most of their situation.
Nick Moroney, head of the juvenile justice oversight unit in the Maryland attorney general’s office, said his team constantly requests more reading materials for children. For some young people, interest in books stems from a lack of other things to do, Moroney said, while others are “voracious readers”.
The unit’s report examining the fourth quarter of 2022 noted that “persistent boredom and lack of meaningful programs” were present at facilities across the state and were “particularly acute” in central Baltimore.
Young people “lament the lack of access to books,” Moroney’s monitoring team wrote, adding that a room designated as an internal library had not been completed or stocked as of the end of last year.
Library services across the center’s school system have improved “significantly” in the first three months of this year, according to the latest report, provided by Moroney. Progress included a new staff member to lead library services, who launched a “timely system” for young people to request and receive books.
About 700 books have been sent to students in the past three months, said Kimberly Pogue, superintendent of the youth services education program.
Jenny Egan, public advocate for young people, said Liberty Libraries are a welcome addition as they allow children to browse and have conversations about books. In this way, Egan said, libraries are “both revolutionary and the most mundane and basic thing.”
The center does not screen or approve titles, Schiraldi said.
Egan called the books a “critical doorway” to empathy, caring and understanding, which she says is especially important for young people placed in a controlled environment like jail or prison, where decisions are made. for them. This environment stops a natural maturing process of testing limits and learning consequences. She said that means it is “essentially important” to ensure they have opportunities for growth and development.
“When a child has the ability to access the world [through books], it’s one of the things that can keep the light and the hope and the wonder alive,” she added. “When you lock a child in a cell, without having access to it, it does far more damage than we ever imagined.”
The Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center houses teenagers waiting to be heard in court, as well as those waiting to be placed in a treatment center after a judge’s decision. It also welcomes children or teenagers who have just been arrested by the police and who are waiting for a first hearing.
Moroney and Egan said the juvenile center still needed vital upgrades – like activities outside of youth class hours – but say Liberty Libraries is an ‘exciting first step’ to investing in children and their spirit.
Schiraldi said more improvements are on the way. In the near future, he said, the center will work with young people to create after-school clubs. And, he said, there is a move towards a “waiting placement unit” within the center that would allow young people to begin their therapy or treatment requested by the judge if places in other public facilities are met.
When The Sun visited on a recent weekday, there were 78 young people at the center, aged between 14 and 18. Among them, 88% were black, a manifestation of the overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system.
More than half were children who were charged as adults and were awaiting a transfer hearing to determine whether their cases would proceed to juvenile or adult court. Maryland is an outlier in the number of children it automatically charges in adult court; Efforts by advocates to change the state’s practice of automatically charging youths with specific criminal offenses are ongoing.
For Betts, libraries and books can help people understand themselves better.
This is especially true for young people, as the city focuses on youth crime and shootings, Schiraldi said.
“We all talk about them. This is one of the hottest topics in our community. But we don’t often hear about them,” Schiraldi said. “I want the world to come to them, in the form of Dwayne [Betts]books. I also want them to come into the world.
DL said young people are often judged by what they are accused of, without the context of “what we have been through”. Young people’s decision-making can be influenced by their family life, financial situation, mental health and other factors, the teens said. Some people don’t have a father, mother or family, and others have to help feed their families, DL said.
Looking at them differently or with fear, or seeing young people as bad people doesn’t help, he said. Nor is it a question of putting them “behind a door” without allowing them to convey “our point of view”.
“Just because we’re locked up doesn’t mean we’re really bad people,” DL said.