Did the Family of Kalief Browder Win Settlement
New York City officials on Thursday announced a $3.3 million settlement with the family of Kalief Browder, who died past suicide after spending near iii years in Rikers Isle, most of it in alone confinement. Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images hide explanation
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Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
New York Metropolis officials on Th announced a $3.3 million settlement with the family of Kalief Browder, who died by suicide afterwards spending most 3 years in Rikers Isle, nigh of information technology in lone confinement.
Pacific Printing/LightRocket via Getty Images
On Thursday, New York City's Law Department announced information technology had reached a $3.iii 1000000 settlement with Kalief Browder'southward family unit. The young man from the Bronx, who spent 3 years detained on Rikers Island without being tried or bedevilled, was defendant of stealing a backpack.
Most two of Browder's iii years in jail were spent in solitary solitude. He was released in 2013 afterwards the charges were dropped. And in 2015, plagued by what he said was the mental anguish and trauma from his time in jail, he hanged himself in his mother's abode.
"Kalief Browder's story helped inspire numerous reforms to the justice system to foreclose this tragedy from e'er happening again, including an stop to punitive segregation for young people on Rikers Island," Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the urban center law department told NPR in an emailed statement.
"We promise that this settlement and our standing reforms help bring some measure of closure to the Browder family unit," he added.
According to The New York Times, "the civil rights and wrongful expiry action is before a judge in Country Supreme Court in the Bronx."
Browder'due south family was satisfied with the settlement, Scott Rynecki, one of the family unit'south attorneys, told NPR.
"The family is pleased that they can bring closure to this part of the affair but hopes that the national recognition that the case gave to the need of prison reform and dealing with younger individuals continues," Rynecki said.
Browder adamantly maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration, which he served because his family unit couldn't afford to pay his $3,000 bail. Over the years, he rejected numerous guilty plea deals that would have allowed him to escape what he said were savage conditions at the prison. He described instances of tearing beatings and torment at the hands of other inmates and guards. He said he was starved and kept in filthy surround. And he spoke of intolerable mental anguish suffered at the easily of prosecutors who repeatedly delayed his trial in the Bronx's infamously overburdened court system.
Even after being out in the costless earth for some fourth dimension, cleared of any wrongdoing and suddenly thrust into the spotlight as a symbol of New York City's pernicious and crippled criminal justice system, Kalief Browder feared he'd been changed forever. That he had been damaged at the cadre of his innermost self after nearly three years of being caged, mostly in solitary confinement, as an adolescent on Rikers Isle after he was arrested.
"People tell me considering I have this case against the city I'm all right. But I'one thousand not all right," Browder told The New Yorker in 2014.
The instance against the young African-American man, who was jailed in 2010 at 16, was eventually dismissed without e'er existence tried. After 31 courtroom appearances before eight different judges, the charges against Browder were dropped. His accuser had left the land and the prosecution could non move frontwards with the example. Meanwhile, Browder had gone from teenager to adult, missing his loftier school graduation and enduring a fell existence within the prison's confines, at least one-half of which was spent alone in a 12- by seven-foot jail cell.
When he spoke to the magazine he had filed a lawsuit against the city, the New York Constabulary Department, the Bronx District Chaser and the Department of Corrections. Withal, he worried that no amount of money would brand him whole again.
"I'm messed up. I know that I might encounter some coin from this case, but that's not going to aid me mentally. I'thou mentally scarred right now. That's how I feel. Because there are certain things that changed most me and they might not become back," Browder said.
In the cease it proved too much. In 2015, he took his own life. He was 22.
The New Yorker story catapulted Browder to the fore of a national fence most the criminal justice system, specially every bit it applies to minors. 2 months after the story ran, New York Urban center Mayor Pecker de Blasio put an terminate to the city'due south utilize of lone solitude for 16- to 17-yr-olds.
Upon learning of Browder's decease, de Blasio said, "Kalief's story helped inspire our efforts on Rikers Island, where we are working to ensure no New Yorkers spend years in jail waiting for their day in court."
After, when plans to permanently shutter the prison were set in motion, de Blasio pointed to Browder's suicide as a "wake-up call" to the city, adding that "his expiry shook the whole city and opened everyone'south eyes and fabricated people think twice."
The city plans to permanently close Rikers Island and has proposed establishing smaller, neighborhood-based facilities.
In 2016, old President Barack Obama similarly noted Browder's feel when he enacted a ban on solitary solitude for juveniles detained in federal prisons.
Browder struggled to find his place outside of Rikers Island after he was released, "Earlier I went to jail, I didn't know about a lot of stuff, and now that I'm enlightened, I'm paranoid," he told The New Yorker. It was a feeling he couldn't shake, even equally he was championed as the catalyst for much-needed alter.
"I feel like I was robbed of my happiness," he said.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/25/688501884/new-york-city-reaches-3-3-million-settlement-with-kalief-browders-family
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