A Question of Freedom: Initial Thoughts

The book A Question of Freedom is written by a man named R. Dwayne Betts. I chose to read this book for my second semester Issues in Modern America class. Mr. Betts was only sixteen years old when it only took thirty minutes to change his life forever. Mr. Betts writes "thirty minutes changed my life. It took less thank thirty minutes for me to find the sleeping man in his car, it took less than thirty minutes for me to get to jail" (7). At age sixteen Mr. Betts was with a friend at a mall in Springfield, Virgina when they found a man sleeping in his car. At that time he pulled out a pistol and tried to take the mans car. He committed six felonies in thirty minutes. At age sixteen Mr. Betts was thrown in jail to await his sentence. Upon his time waiting in jail he met a boy named Chi. Chi was only fifteen years old at the time and was being charged as an adult for attempted murder. He told Mr. Betts that he was not guilty. Chi had gotten in a fight at school. A fight at school leads to an attempted murder charge. Mr. Betts writes "Judges learned to read our complexions, crimes, and communities as reasons why we needed the bars of a jail. And anyone telling me that isn't true should take a look at the shades of brown I watched walk in and out of the system. Couldn't tell me then this wasn't true, when I'd seen one white child locked up in three months. Chi told me he wasn't guilty, and I told him it probably didn't matter" (16-17).
The introduction to Mr. Betts story was not surprising to me, but it was still disturbing. In particular Chi's story. A school fight, which happens at my own school, leading to an attempted murder charge? If Chi was charged with assault as a juvenile that I would understand, he could still get an education, take courses on anger management, and pay his debt to society. I believe when young offenders are charged with exaggerated crimes and are put into an adult prison it is going to really hurt them in the future, except Mr. Betts is different. The judge gave him a nine year sentence. This lead Mr. Betts to get out of prison around the age of twenty-five. The human male brain does not fully develop until the age of twenty-five, so that is nine years of Mr. Betts' young life that was developed in prison. Now I believe that Mr. Betts is different because when he came out of jail, we went on to do something different unlike the majority of inmates released each year, which end up back in the prison system. Mr. Betts went on to write this book, A Question of Freedom. In this book he reflects on his time in prison and his crime that he committed. That thirty minutes it took to change his life forever.