NYC to Pay $3.3 Million to Family of Teen Who Languished at Rikers Island Lawyer representing Mr. Browder’s estate called the settlement fair
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nyc-to-pay-3-3-million-to-family-of-teen-who-languished-at-rikers-island-11548371523?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=3
New York City will pay $3.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of the teenager who spent three years at the Rikers Island jail complex after being accused of stealing a backpack, becoming a symbol of dysfunction in the criminal-justice system.
In 2010, 16-year-old Kalief Browder, originally from the Bronx, was arrested and held at Rikers on $3,000 bail. He spent time in solitary confinement and returned to court dozens of times. In 2013, the charges were dismissed. After his release, Mr. Browder died by suicide in 2015 at the age of 22.
“Kalief Browder’s story helped inspire numerous reforms to the justice system to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again, including an end to punitive segregation for young people on Rikers Island,” a spokesman for the New York City Law Department said on Thursday. “We hope that this settlement and our continuing reforms help bring some measure of closure to the Browder family.”
The city didn’t acknowledge wrongdoing in the settlement.
“This was a fair and reasonable settlement,” said lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who represents Mr. Browder’s estate.
The $3.3 million settlement includes attorney fees and expenses. A surrogate judge will determine how the money is distributed among Mr. Browder’s family members.
A 2014 profile in the New Yorker magazine about Mr. Browder prompted national outrage. Over the next several years, his name was frequently mentioned by advocates and elected officials pushing changes to bail, pretrial detention and conditions in jails, among other criminal-justice issues. In 2016, President Obama cited Mr. Browder’s case while arguing to reduce the use of solitary confinement.
The problems surrounding Mr. Browder’s case were well known in low-income communities and communities of color, said Tyler Nims, executive director of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, which advocates for changes to the criminal-justice system. But the human element of his story drew mainstream attention to issues that previously had flown under the radar, he added.
“It was hugely important in starting the push to close Rikers Island and some of the other justice reforms we are starting to see today,” Mr. Nims said.
Mr. Browder’s story also drew attention to individual cases that had once been largely ignored. Another Bronx teen, Pedro Hernandez, spent more than a year at Rikers on weapons charges before Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, an advocacy group, posted $100,000 to bail him out. Prosecutors eventually dropped those charges.
“If it wasn’t for Kalief Browder, that may have never happened,” said Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Alex Spiro. “He helped save Pedro’s life.”
Write to Corinne Ramey at Corinne.Ramey@wsj.com
Appeared in the January 25, 2019, print edition as ‘City to Pay Family $3.3 Million.’
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