Reginald Dwayne Betts is an American poet, legal scholar, educator and prison reform advocate.

[6] Betts was charged as an adult and consequently spent more than eight years in prison (including fourteen months in solitary confinement),[7] where he completed high school and began reading and writing poetry.

[8] After serving an eight-year prison term,[9] Betts found a job working at Karibu Books in Bowie, Maryland.

At the store, he was eventually promoted to manager and founded a book club for African American boys, while attending Prince George's Community College in Largo, Maryland.

[12] In 2012, President Barack Obama announced that Betts had been named a member of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

[16] In 2017, Only Once I Thought About Suicide received the Israel H. Peres Prize for best student comment appearing in the Yale Law Journal.

[21] His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including Ploughshares,[10][22] Crab Orchard Review, and Poet Lore.