the issue of authorities brutality and injustice
At a time when the nation confronts a crisis of mass incarceration with more than two million persons in prisons and jails, the personal history of one Bronx man is revealing precisely how broken the criminal proper rights system truly is.
The damaging story of Kalief Browder is a story that affected many and brought law enforcement brutality and injustice to light.
In 2010, at the age of sixteen, Kalief Browder was apprehended simply by police who also suspected him of moving a thieved backpack. His family was unable to pay out the $3, 000. 00 bail to get him out, which led to Browder’s three-year period behind bars, a pair of those years in solo confinement. Through his lengthy overdue stay, Browder experienced beatings, malnourishment and torture all without ever being convicted of a crime.
Browder wasn’t delivered to just any prison. Having been sent to Riker’s Island penitentiary complex. For some this information may appear unimportant, however , this prison had a great role inside the unfortunate decline of this young man.
Rikers Island penitentiary complex can be deemed among the nation’s most violent prisons in the country. Since May 2015, “the jail complex on Rikers Tropical isle failed to conform to minimum basic safety standards and has become thus dangerous that it can no longer become permitted to take inmate transactions from outside New York City” (Gonnerman, 2016). Browder was sent to someplace he should not have been at in the first place.
One could just imagine what Browder needed to experience in the awful jail. He endured beatings, hunger and torture without ever becoming convicted of the crime. In the first time there, he was beat by officers frequently, many of that have been caught upon surveillance video. “He was eventually introduced after the case was dismissed” (Moseley, 2017).
During Browders time at the penitentiary, he suffered about 2 yrs in one confinement, in which he attempted to end his your life several times. “Once, in Feb, 2012, he ripped his bed sheet into whitening strips, tied all of them together to make a noose, and tried to hold himself in the light light fixture in his cell” (Gonnerman, 2016).
In November of 2013, Browder was released from Rikers and unfortunately tried suicide again. “This resulted in him staying sent to the psychiatric ward at St . Barnabas Clinic, not far from his home, in the Bronx” (Gonnerman, 2016).
Weeks just before his death, Kalief Browder was thriving at Bronx Community College. The 22-year-old had signed up for college classes after getting imprisoned. “While in school, Browder, who had suffered with depression since his imprisonment, wrote an essay entitled A Closer Take a look at Solitary Confinement in the United States, in which he explored the mental results solitary confinement had about inmates. His professor offered him an A” (Time, 2017). Every thing seemed good on the area, but you under no circumstances know what someone is going through on the inside.
Then later that year, he stopped gonna classes at Bronx Community College. During the week of Christmas, he was confined in the psych keep at Harlem Hospital.
Unfortunately, in June of 2015, Browder hanged him self with a great air conditioning wire after he suffered from items like depression and many flashbacks coming from his imprisonment. “His previous words had been “ma We can’t have it anymore” to his mother” (Moseley, 2017).
Browder’s death had a big impact on his mother. Regretfully, more than yr after her son hanged himself, The brand new York Daily News reported that his mother, “Venida Browder, perished from complications of a heart attack on October 6, 2016. The 63-year-old mother of six kids died in St . Barnabas Hospital inside the Bronx” (Time, 2016). It upsets myself to know that every one of this could have already been prevented in the very beginning in the event the justice system wasnt therefore flawed.
The upheaval of Browder’s story acquired attention by many celebrities like Rand Paul, and more important Jay-Z. This kind of led to the highly celebrated rapper to produce a docu-series glowing light in Browder’s your life and unfortunate situation. The docu-series traces that time, “weaving itself in and out of interview footage with Browder, his family and friends, several agents inside the NYC legal justice program, and irregular appearances coming from author Michelle Alexander (“The New Sean Crow”), Bryan Stevenson (“Just Mercy”) and Jay-Z” (Kalief, 2017). The docu-series as well portrays the violence as well as the normalization of violence and subhuman specifications at Rikers. Footage that is certainly shown consistently stands out because you watch many ways that Browder was forced to survive in spite of the conditions that threatened in order to him.
Some would say that the brand new York authorities department wiped out Kalief Browder. He was a product of elegance and injustice. Browder will still be strolling the roads among us.
This brings everyone towards the question, how could we replace the ongoing injustices against youthful African American males? Well in accordance to an excerpt from Browder’s college essay, he admits that, maybe one other form of treatment or segregation should be integrated to deal with inmates who break jail rules as opposed to inmates who cause severe trouble for other inmates and a static correction officers, as the mental health risk is definitely poses are too great (Moseley, 2017). Each of our group would agree with his statement. Mental health is usually something that is usually overlooked from this country, especially within the Dark-colored community.
To wrap things up, though society has lost a innocent young man, and not directly a mother, our group has high hopes that Browders tale will be a cautionary tale and bring reconstructs to the practice of imprisoning juveniles and the use of solitary confinement.
