New York City Department of Corrections announced it will stop using solitary confinement to punish adolescents held in its troubled Rikers Island jail complex, the second-largest jail system in the country. But a federal prosecutor said the city’s reforms were moving too slowly to address a, quote, “culture of violence,” and warned he may file a civil lawsuit over conditions for teenagers held in Rikers. New York is one of only two states nationwide that automatically charge 16- and 17-year-olds as adults.
a 16-year-old high school sophomore who was jailed at Rikers Island for nearly three years after he refused to plead guilty to a crime he said he did not commit. It was May 15, 2010, when Kalief Browder was walking home from a party with his friends in the Bronx and was stopped by police based on a tip that he had robbed someone weeks earlier.
Kalief Browder did not go home for 33 months, even though he was never convicted. For nearly 800 days of that time, he was held in solitary confinement. He maintained his innocence and requested a trial, but was only offered plea deals while the trial was repeatedly delayed. Near the end of his time in jail, the judge offered to sentence him to time served if he entered a guilty plea, and told him he could face 15 years in prison if he was convicted. He refused to accept the deal and was only released when the case was dismissed.
Jennifer Gonnerman talking:
May 2010, he’s coming home from a party late one night in the Bronx, walking with his friend down the street, and a police car pulls up. There’s somebody in the back seat who points him out, saying, you know—accusing him of a robbery that had happened one or two weeks earlier. He says, “I didn’t do it.”
so there was, from the beginning, it sounded like, at least the way Kalief tells it, some confusion about the dates, which is significant. And he goes into the precinct thinking, “I’m just”—and he’s in the holding cell, thinking, “I’m just going to be here for a couple hours. We’ll clear up this misunderstanding.” And, as you said, he ended up doing almost three years on Rikers Island, for many reasons, but the system sort of completely failed him in every possible way. There was no speedy trial. And during that time, he was locked up in the adolescent jail on Rikers Island.
when we talk about Rikers Island, it’s a jail complex. There’s 10 different jails there. And I think a lot of people get confused between prison and jail. A prison is where you go after you’ve been convicted and sentenced. A jail is where you go while you’re waiting for your case to go through the court. On Rikers Island, 85 percent of the people locked up there are legally innocent. They have not been convicted of a crime yet, and they may never be convicted of a crime. They’re there waiting to find out whether they’re guilty or innocent and what their fate is going to be. And so, Kalief was one of those people. So, despite the fact that he was not convicted of a crime, he endured the punishment anyway.
from the beginning of the case, there were two co-defendants. And Kalief’s co-defendant, the other friend, was released from day one, and so he got to wait at home while the case went through the system. And Kalief’s bail was set at $3,000 because he was already on probation in a prior case. So, he had a mark against him, and that mark sort of chased him for the next three years. Ultimately, they filed a violation of probation against him, which meant that he was remanded. So even though the bail was $3,000, it was out of the reach of his family. Even if they had spent time fundraising from everybody they knew, ultimately it didn’t matter because he was remanded. There was no bail set for three years. So he was held without bail while this case sort of crawled through the court system.
Paul Prestia talking:
Just to clarify on that prior conviction, that was a youthful offender adjudication, so that, theoretically, was sealed from his record. So, while he was convicted, he was 16 at the time, and that conviction was sealed from his record—not something that should have been used against him, but perhaps an anomaly because he was on probation at the same time.
In any event, as Jen pointed out—I would have titled her piece—and it was an excellent piece, obviously—I spoke with her in depth while she was writing the article. I would have titled it “The Criminal Justice System Deconstructed.”
People being pressured not to go to trial, but to plead guilty. it’s just common sense. If someone’s in jail and they’re desperate to get out, they’re more inclined to take a plea. It’s just human nature to do anything, to find any way to get out of that jail, especially if you’ve spent some time in solitary.
when the Bronx judge is replaced by a Brooklyn judge, and she begins to see what he’s been through and says, “You will be out today. After two-and-a-half years, just plea. You face 15 years in jail if you go to trial,” and he said, “No.” I mean, all the other prisoners said, “Are you crazy?” to him. This is a kid. He said, “I’m innocent. I’m not going to say I was guilty.”
Jennifer Gonnerman talking:
the longer you’re incarcerated in jail, the greater the pressure to plead, right? And for somebody like Kalief, who was in one of the worst jails—he was in the adolescent jail in Rikers Island, which the U.S. Attorney’s Office recently put out a blistering report about the horrific conditions there. On top of that, he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. So it just ratchets up the pressure more and more and more. You know, he could not have been under greater pressure to plead. And yet, despite all that, he just said, that day, to the judge—the judge, you know, made that offer, and he said, “I’m all right. I didn’t do it. I’m all right.” And the judge says, “You’re all right?” I mean, clearly, he was not all right. But he said, “I’m all right,” like, “I got this. I could do it.” And she said, “You’re all right?” And he said, “I want to go to trial,” the same thing he had been saying for three years. But trials rarely happen in the Bronx. And that’s sort of one of the sort of dirty secrets of the whole system.
from the court files all of the continuances that occurred in this trial, while he’s waiting, demanding to go to trial. You have from the court file: “June 23, 2011: People not ready, request 1 week.” But that one week turns into—looks like three months: “August 24, 2011: People not ready, request 1 day.” Then, “November 4, 2011: People not ready, prosecutor on trial, request 2 weeks.” Then, “December 2, 2011: Prosecutor on trial, request January 3rd.” So each time it was the prosecutors who were delaying the start of a trial.
once they asked for a week or two weeks, it would turn into a matter of scheduling. Everybody looks at their calendars, and maybe the prosecutor can’t do it, or maybe the judge can’t do it, or maybe the defense attorney can’t. And it became a sort of logistics game at every court date. But, you know, one or two weeks turning into six weeks, you know, for somebody like Kalief, that’s six more weeks that he’s got to wait.
initial attorney was a court-appointed lawyer—it’s called 18-B lawyer in New York City, but a court-appointed lawyer, paid $75 an hour to represent Kalief. And, you know, it’s a system that has been criticized over the years, because in order to make a living, you’ve got to have a lot of cases. And you’re sort of—those lawyers are sort of running around the city all the time. And, you know, so he never visited his client on Rikers Island, means he never visited his client, because he was on Rikers Island the whole time.
as sad as it is, it’s not that uncommon for 18-B lawyers never to make the trip to Rikers Island, because it’s like a half a day, you know, nightmare. You know, they have video conferences in the Bronx, where you can talk to your client face to face. And, you know, I asked him had he ever done that; he said, “I’m pretty sure I did.” And then I asked Kalief, did he remember having a videoconference with his lawyer, and he said, “No.” So, you know, I don’t know.
the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy trial. And in New York, we have something called the “ready rule.” So, when these prosecutors, as Juan was reading off the list, say, you know, “We’re not ready, but we can be ready in a week”—so that’s one week charged against them. Yet the court—the next court date is set one month, two months, three months away. So that only counts as one week against the six-month deadline that we have in New York. So, even though he was held for three years, it’s not like there’s three—the three years count against him. It’s every week or two weeks or one day that the prosecutors ask for. So time is moving in two separate ways. There’s sort of the world of the courthouse, where time is moving at a glacial pace, and then there’s Kalief’s life, where every day feels like 10 because he’s trapped in a box in Rikers Island solitary.
Kalief Browder went on to say he was once starved four times in a row—no breakfast, lunch, dinner or breakfast again. Talk about the conditions of solitary confinement and how a kid, a teenager, would end up in solitary confinement for two years.
Kalief’s talking about being hungry in jail. And even though he’s talking about one instance, in fact, it was a much sort of broader problem. So, when you’re in solitary confinement, you get three meals a day coming through a slot in the door, because you’re not leaving your cell. And for teenagers locked in solitary—and this is not just Kalief, this is other teenagers have talked about this—there’s not enough food. And once you’re in solitary—you know, when you’re in general population, the regular jail, if you’re not getting enough food, you can maybe get some money in your commissary account and get some snacks and fill up your stomach.
his mother did look out for him and visited him every week. But here he is, stuck in solitary. He can’t supplement his meal. He’s reduced to begging officers through the cell door: “Can I get an extra piece of bread?” Sometimes they give it, sometimes they laugh at him. And, you know, basically, there’s a 12-hour stretch from dinner to breakfast where all these teenagers are drinking water out of the sink to fill their stomachs. And, you know, when he told me this, at first I thought, well, maybe it’s just him, or maybe it’s a one-off thing. You know, he was talking about meals being skipped. But I’m saying it’s a broader sort of problem. But there was a recent report that came out from Bronx Defenders organization, where they talked about many of their clients with similar complaints. And, you know, for a moment, I thought, “Did we just pick up this kid off the street in the Bronx and drop him in Guantánamo?” I mean, this is the kind of thing that, you know, that you guys cover all the time. It just—it seemed, frankly, almost unbelievable.
the adolescents in the regular jail were supposed to be taken every day to class, to a school that they have there. And they’re taught by Department of Education—you know, it’s a Department of Education-run school. But once a kid was put into solitary, they weren’t being taken out for school anymore. And what they would do is slip a worksheet under the door in the morning, an officer would, or a few, and, “Finish this by Wednesday. Finish this by Thursday.” So, Kalief’s sitting there. He’s got nothing to do. He thinks, “Well, I might as well do something. I might as well try to do this.” You know, so he’s kind of trying to teach himself how to be a better writer, math, etc. And then Thursday comes—you know, time moving at this incredibly slow pace—and nobody comes to pick up the work. I mean, that didn’t always happen, but it happened often enough. And, I mean, it’s just—you know, it’s a small detail, but it just shows the utter apathy, you know, and lack of concern for everybody in there. So he’s banging on the door. “Where is the correction officer to pick up the work?” You know, he’s trying to improve himself in this absolutely nightmare of a place.
Officers weren’t sure who was responsible, so they grabbed whoever they could find, threw them in the hall and, you know, their faces to the wall, and just started kind of trying to figure out who did it and yelling at them and smacking them in the face each time, and really beating some of the kids up. And so, Kalief tells me this incredible story of, you know, leaky noses and sort of swollen eyes. And at the end, the officers say, “OK, you know, we can either take you to the clinic, which means—and if you tell the folks who work at the clinic, the civilian medical staff, what happened, you’re going to end up in solitary. Or you can just go back to bed and pretend nothing happened.” So, Kalief and the other guys say, “OK, we’ll go back to bed.”
He tells me this incredible story in April. I think, that is—I didn’t doubt him, but I just thought, “Is that like a one-time thing? What is going on on Rikers Island?” I mean, I knew the conditions were very bad in the adolescent jail, but that was a level of brutality that was pretty, you know, hard to wrap your mind around. Then, come August, this report comes out, and I would encourage anybody who’s interested to read this report, because even though government reports are sometimes a little dry, this one is incredible in the level of graphic detail and the way it’s written.
there was a lot of teenagers put into solitary. It’s sort of the ultimate management tool, the way they were dealing with unruly population. There was like almost an addiction to solitary confinement. And once in solitary, you know, as study after study shows sort of the incredible impact on one’s mental health, so you can have inmates going in, who didn’t have any mental health problems, coming out a broken person—you know, the paranoia, the lack of trust, the sort of being overwhelmed by stimulation. I mean, Kalief, since he’s been out, you can still see the impact of solitary, even though he’s been home for 16 months. I mean, he, at times—you know, like his brother was telling me, “You know, I’ll invite Kalief to the movies. ‘Do you want to go out, do something fun?’ And Kalief says, ‘Ah, no, I don’t want to do that,’” and he’d rather sort of retreat and be in his room at home, door closed, almost recreating the conditions of solitary, and feels more comfortable like that sometimes than out in the world.
they accused him of stealing a backpack, right? As you said in your opening. Yet, at the end of the day, they stole Kalief Browder’s innocence.
— source democracynow.org
Jennifer Gonnerman, reporter, author and contributing editor at New York magazine, and a contributing writer to The New Yorker magazine. Her latest story for The New Yorker is “Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life.” Her book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award.
Paul Prestia, attorney for Kalief Browder.