Justice versus Conscience

When he came home three years later, he wasn’t the same person.

Police arrested the Bronx teenager on suspicion of stealing a backpack in 2010. Unable to afford $3,000 bail, Browder spent three years at Rikers Island jail complex in New York City — about two of which were spent in solitary confinement — awaiting a trial that never came. While there, he was starved and beaten, his brother said.

The charges against him eventually were dismissed and he was released in 2013. Less than two years after his release, haunted by his experiences in jail, Browder took his own life. His detention and death caused public outcry and spurred calls for reform, fueling national discussions about race, criminal justice and juvenile punishment.

In the years since, his brother, Akeem, has advocated for change. Last week, he brought the fight to Oklahoma.

“We want to see a change more than just saying this system is flawed,” Akeem Browder told reporters during a news conference Thursday at the state Capitol. “It’s not flawed. It was created to be this way. It was created to break families, to incarcerate and make black and brown people across this nation look like the criminals and the felons and the convicts that we’re not. We’re human beings just like everyone else, and it’s time that change comes.”

A report released earlier this year by Open Justice Oklahoma showed that Oklahomans accused of nonviolent offenses often spend several weeks in local and county jails because they’re unable to afford to post money bond.

Last legislative session, Oklahoma lawmakers considered a bill to reform the bail process that advocates said would have ended the practice of “unnecessary and expensive” pretrial detention for most people with misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges, allowing those individuals to return to their families and jobs while waiting for their day in court. The measure failed to clear the Oklahoma House.

Thursday night, Browder shared his brother’s story during a forum at Langston University organized by the university’s student chapter of the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice.

“My brother didn’t deserve this, and a lot of people suffer the injustice of going into places that they don’t belong and they shouldn’t have been accused but they fit the description of someone that looks like them,” Akeem Browder said. “Sometimes … because you don’t even have to look like the perpetrator. You just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

During the forum, a panel that included a judge, a representative from the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, the ex-officio chair of the governor’s RESTORE criminal justice task force, and a Board of Corrections member, discussed a variety of topics, including mental health, re-entry, predatory lending and Pell grants.

Letina McLeod, president of the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice student chapter and Alpha Phi Sigma Criminal Justice Honor Society on campus, said she was inspired to take action after she saw “TIME: The Kalief Browder Story,” a six-part documentary series co-produced by rapper Jay-Z.

“For many years, we’ve chosen to just lock people up when accused of wrongdoings,” she said. “I’m a believer that not all individuals have a criminal mindset. For some, there are no options. For others, there are mental health issues that may be in question, yet they are automatically incarcerated without the issues being addressed, leaving them to fall under the injustices of the justice system.”

Akeem Browder told the audience his brother just wanted to be heard. His mom, who died of a heart attack the year after Kalief’s death, wanted justice. His goal, he said, is to bring about change.

“Action is the only thing that’s going to avoid having another Kalief Browder,” he said. “We cannot suffer another injustice. Every day that goes by, even right now while we’re here, another Kalief Browder is happening just because we haven’t stopped the system — we’re talking about the system.”