On Thursday, New York City’s Law Department announced it had reached a $3.3 million settlement with Kalief Browder’s family. The young man from the Bronx, who spent three years detained on Rikers Island without being tried or convicted, was accused of stealing a backpack.
Nearly two of Browder’s three years in jail were spent in solitary confinement. He was released in 2013 after the charges were dropped. And in 2015, plagued by what he said was the mental anguish and trauma from his time in jail, he hanged himself in his mother’s home.
“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,” Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city law department told NPR in an emailed statement.
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