Suicide of man who spent youth in Rikers shows devastation of racially biased justice system

Monday marked seven years since the death by suicide of Kalief Browder. Arrested as a 16-year-old Black child in 2010, Browder was held at New York's Rikers Island for three years, much of the time in solitary confinement, awaiting trial for a crime he insisted he did not commit.

Browder’s death in 2015 did bring policy changes to the criminal justice system. In 2016, the Obama administration banned solitary confinement for juveniles held in federal prison. New York’s state legislature passed a bill in 2019 prohibiting judges from setting bail for most nonviolent felonies and instructing them to consider whether a defendant can afford to make bail. In 2020, New York legislators passed a “speedy trial law” requiring prosecutors to turn over discovery ahead of trial to give defense attorneys and public defenders sufficient time to prepare their defense.

But less attention has been paid to the most egregious aspect of Browder’s case – that he was arrested in the first place, based solely on unsubstantiated accusations.

Stereotypical connection between blackness and criminality

Legislation can’t mitigate against our tendency to deny Black people the benefit of the doubt while extending this privilege to other racial groups. To accomplish that, we have to dislodge the stereotypical connection between blackness and criminality that is so pervasive in America. And that is an uphill battle.

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Browder and a friend were confronted by police while walking down the street in the Bronx, according to a New Yorker article. A Latino immigrant accompanying the officers said the boys had just robbed him. Stunned, the boys insisted that they had not stolen anything and volunteered to be searched. When none of the man’s items were found on them, Browder said the man revised his story, according to the report, saying the boys had robbed him two weeks ago.

Despite the absence of any supporting evidence, the boys were arrested. Browder’s family could not make bail, and he was on probation for taking a joyride with friends in a delivery truck, which meant he was held at Rikers Island to await trial.

White student given lenient sentence

The same year Browder took his life, Brock Turner, a white Stanford undergrad, was accused of raping a young woman outdoors near a fraternity party. Two graduate students biking nearby saw him and held him while they waited for police. A jury convicted Turner and prosecutors requested a six-year sentence. But Judge Aaron Persky, a Stanford alum, sentenced Turner to a mere six months in jail followed by probation.

Turner claimed the young woman, unconscious during the assault, had consented and Persky indicated he believed him and that it was Turner who needed the state’s protection, not the rape victim.

"I take him at his word," the judge reasoned according to The Atlantic. He argued that a sentence consistent with what prosecutors recommended would have "adverse collateral consequences" for the undergrad.

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A groundbreaking study conducted by psychologists at Stanford helps us to understand the double standard we see in the Browder and Turner cases. They show that racial stereotypes inform people’s beliefs about the association between Black people and crime.

In the study, subjects were placed into one of three groups – those exposed to an image of a Black face, a white face or neither face. Researchers then asked subjects to identify an object on a computer screen by pushing a button as soon as the blurry object became clear. Some images were crime-related, such as a gun. Others were not. Subjects exposed to an image of a Black male identified crime-related objects more quickly compared with those who had been exposed to no faces at all. Exposure to an image of a white person ahead of time inhibited subjects’ ability to recognize crime-related objects.

Browder was finally released in 2013 after his accuser migrated back to Mexico, leaving prosecutors with no way to carry the robbery charge forward at trial. He had maintained his innocence and was never convicted, but Browder spent more time in jail than Turner, who had been convicted of sexual assault.

'Robbed' of happiness, driven to suicide

Two years after his release, Browder died by suicide. While held at Rikers, Browder was routinely beaten. He missed nearly every rite of passage central to teen life: fully celebrating his 18th birthday; his senior prom; his high school graduation ceremony.

"I was robbed of my happiness," he said, according to the New Yorker article.

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Turner came from a middle-class family and Browder did not, highlighting how important the intersection of race and class is in the debate about stereotyping and crime. Nonetheless, while middle-class Black families might have the resources to avoid imprisonment by posting bail or hiring a good lawyer, my research shows that middle-class Black people are aware that all Black people face the threat of racial stigmatization.

Browder’s tragic death was ruled a suicide, but the truth is we all killed him. So long as stereotypes characterizing an entire group as criminals based solely on their race continue to circulate, we all have blood on our hands.

Even white people who commit murder, like the supermarket mass shooter in Buffalo, New York, are treated with more grace and deference than Black people who haven’t done anything wrong.

Let’s imagine a world where we give Black people the same benefit of the doubt as white people and work toward achieving that.

Karyn Lacy, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, is the author of "Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class."  

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Suicide after Rikers shows devastation of racially biased system