Kalief Browder

In the first hour Paul Wright of the Human Rights Defense Center and Prison Legal News joins me to discuss prisoner rights. We talk about the current state of America’s 2.5 million incarcerated individuals and the tremendous hardships they face. Paul talks about the legacy of Prison Legal News and how it represents one of the only truly independent media outlets talking about the prison system.

NEW YORK — Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick visited inmates held at New York’s Rikers Island on Thursday, December 14 “to share a message of hope and inspiration,” according to New York City Department of Corrections spokesman Peter Thorne.

Kalief Browder, who killed himself after spending three years in solitary confinement on charges of stealing a backpack. (ABC NEWS)
Nearly two years after the suicide of a former Rikers inmate highlighted a punitive bail system, an audit released Thursday shows that it costs New York City $116 million a year to lock up mostly young black men awaiting trial for misdemeanors.

Kalief Browder committed suicide when he hanged himself with an air conditioner power cord on June 6. Actually Kalief Browder’s death at age 22 is a state killing with uncounted accomplices among police officers, prosecutors, judges, prison guards, prison officials, legislators, mayors, governors, and all the rest of the state justice apparatus that was utterly incapable of providing anything close to decent, just procedures in dealing with a wrongly-accused, innocent, 16-year-old black man.