Kalief Browder Quotes

by courts and commentators. In making his point, he quoted Dostoyevsky: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” He cited the case of Kalief Browder, a young New York City man who killed himself this month after being held as a teenager at Rikers Island without trial for three years, two of them in solitary. And he noted research showing that solitary confinement is most harmful to young people and the mentally ill, who often end up in prison.

Kalief Browder was arrested in 2010 at age sixteen for stealing a backpack and then held for three years without a trial on Rikers Island. During his time on Rikers, Kalief was beaten by both guards and inmates, and he spent an inconceivable two years in solitary confinement before his case was finally dismissed in 2013.