Justice

What Jeff Sessions Could Learn From Kalief Browder

Arrested at 16 and unjustly jailed for three years, Browder took his life in 2015. A new six-part documentary series, executive produced by Jay Z, exposes the many ways the criminal justice system failed him.

Akeem Browder, brother of the late Kalief Browder, leads a march to shut down New York City's Rikers Island Jail, where his brother was falsely imprisoned for nearly three years. Time: The Kalief Browder Story (Facebook)

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By Brentin Mock

February 28, 2017 at 5:43 PM EST

Today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions created his Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, as the White House ordered him to do. “Yes, incarceration is painful for the families of inmates, and every conviction represents a failure on multiple levels of society,” said Sessions, addressing the National Association of Attorneys General today. “But the costs of rising crime are even more severe. Drug crimes and violent felonies change the lives of victims forever.”

One person whose life was changed forever by incarceration was Kalief Browder, who, in a fair world, would serve on Sessions’ public safety task force. Arrested in 2010 at age 16 and shipped to Rikers Island for a crime he didn’t commit, Broweder was mentally and physically abused by virtually every part of the criminal justice experiment. Who better to serve as Sessions’ advisor?

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