I'm Akeem Browder, Kalief Browder was my brother.
My brother Kalief took his life after three years
of incarceration for a crime he didn't commit.
When he came out in 2013, Kalief was not the same Kalief.
The damage that was already done,
it was not just physical, it was mental,
emotional, psychological.
When Kalief came home he tried to go back
to normal society, or quote unquote normal society.
So he went to college.
That was when Kalief became more paranoid
at the thought that he could easily be taken back to jail.
After Kalief's death I began advocating for bail reform.
I won't allow my brother's death to be in vain.
I formed a grassroots organization called Shut Down Rikers
and I started going to townhalls.
I hold the entire system of incarceration,
the school to prison pipeline, for the death of my brother.
I think it's fair to say that Kalief
wouldn't have committed suicide
if we had bail reform that we have today.
Well Akeem, first off, I'm very sorry for your loss.
What was it like when you went to visit your kid brother?
My brother, he was definitely starting to change.
He was progressing to be what that jail makes you out to be,
a hardened, lifestyle that you have
to fight for your life.
In that situation, Riker's Island is like many other jails.
The corruption, the culture of violence,
it predicates that you have to become a gladiator
and Kalief, either you get swallowed up in that system
and you become a victim or you become
the fighter that tries to survive
while you're fighting for your justice.
And the bail was $3,000 right?
You had to come up with $3,000?
And you eventually, your family eventually
did come up with the $3,000 but then they said no,
they won't take the $3,000.
The $3,000 we got two weeks later
and the bail bonds company that we went to in the Bronx,
they turned away from the bail because they said
he had a prior charge, which was joyriding in a bread truck
that him and his friends did.
Kalief was on probation and this charge,
felonious as it was, it was one of the things
that kept him in jail, in Riker's.
So he stayed in Riker's for three years
and they kept offering him plea deals
but he wouldn't take them because he said,
"I didn't do this". Exactly.
They offered him five different plea deals
and he said, "No, no, no, I'm not gonna plea
"to something I didn't do".
Now Judge Rosemarie is really against bail reform
and thinks judges should have discretion.
What do you say to judges that oppose bail reform?
I would say look at it this way.
Where did bail start?
The history of bail is they used bail
to capture escaped slaves and what we find
in our system today is predominately black and brown folk
in jail accused of a crime.
Not in prison where they're sentenced,
and they are already taken a plea bargain or found guilty,
but they're accused of a crime.
That means they are innocent until proven guilty.
We use that same age old practice of bail,
which we used back in the days when they was slaves,
furthermore keeping them being enslaved
and taking away their freedom,
taking away their ability to get true justice,
and so we project them to the public as criminals.
They're not criminals.
They're accused until proven guilty.
They are detainees actually.
Your brother, and I'm terribly sorry for your loss.
First of all, we should not have 16 year olds in jail.
The average stay on Riker's is 42 days.
If you're mentally ill, the average stay
of a mentally ill person at Riker's is 215 days,
five times that.
Your brother was five times, three years,
five times that of a mentally ill person
and 26 times more than the average stay of 42 days.
Now, he never should have been there,
but there needs to be a different place for minors.
There needs to be assessments that include addressing
homelessness, that address mentally ill,
we need to start over.
This law though, that only addresses no bail,
and not safety is a problem and is overreaching
and will cause more problems.