Last week I watched a video that made me wince in horror. It showed a black teenager from the Bronx, Kalief Browder, being savagely beaten by prison officers and fellow inmates at Rikers Island prison in New York. That footage, captured by the prison’s surveillance system, was bad enough. Even more chilling was the backstory, revealed by a haunting piece of investigative reporting in The New Yorker magazine last year: Browder was in prison because, at the age of 16, he was accused of stealing a backpack and detained.
As it happens, in 2013 he was released having been deemed innocent. But that verdict was reached only after he had been in prison for three years, waiting for his day in court, a victim of a justice system whose wheels can grind extremely slowly, particularly for anyone who is poor. (Browder’s family was unable to afford the $3,000 bail to release him.)
During his long confinement, Browder was badly mistreated because he repeatedly rebelled and proclaimed his innocence. This left terrible scars. So much so that last week, tragically, the 22-year-old Browder committed suicide, prompting The New Yorker and others to reprise the shameful tale and re-release the Rikers surveillance footage.