Kalief Browder: A Story of Our Criminal Injustice System

This was written by Maggie, one of our summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

A Bronx teenager, Kalief Browder, was walking down the street one night with his friend. Before he knew it, he was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car. He was being accused of robbing someone a couple weeks before and seconds later was accused of stealing a backpack that night. Browder was interrogated and could not pay the bail, but his family was hopeful he would get out of jail because he was innocent. The accusations were completely false. Three years later, in which were spent in solitary confinement, Browder was released from prison. He chose to not take his plea bargain. He was placed in the Rikers Island prison while the system he was trapped in repeatedly delayed his trial. It took three years for Browder to get a trial in court. Additionally, outside of solitary confinement, he was beaten by guards and inmates. Devastatingly, the terrible condition of our criminal injustice system and prisons led him to take his own life in the end. Browder was only 16-years-old when arrested but tried as an adult, and he was never convicted of a crime. As ArchCity Defenders has stated, “Browder’s freedom was priced at $3,000, but it costs him his life.” 

ArchCity Defenders is a St. Louis-based non-profit civil rights law firm that provides legal advocacy holistically while also fighting the poverty criminalization and state violence against minorities such as the poor and people of color. The organization works directly with clients, impacting litigation and collaborating with community to uphold civil rights, and it also continuously challenges the systematic oppression in the criminal injustice system that directly impact poor communities and communities of color. ArchCity Defenders has filed 53 civil rights lawsuits since 2014, represented thousands of St. Louisans, housed 161 people (36 families) since August of 2018, and partnered with over 50 nonprofits and universities to work towards social reform.

Part of their Racial Justice Film Series this summer included Time: Kalief Browder Story (Episode 1), the six-part docuseries produced by Jay-Z. They have discussed everything from the Civil Rights Movement to debtors’ prison to cash bail to St. Louis neighborhoods, such as Ferguson. Their showings are open to anyone and free, always followed by an impressive and thought provoking discussion panel. The films also relate to the clients of ArchCity Defenders and the poverty, violence, and criminalization they face. St. Louis, unfortunately, has many cases like Kalief Browder’s experience. Like Browder, pretrial detention, cash bail, and correctional facilities are far too common in St. Louis. Currently, hundreds of people are innocent and have not been convicted of a crime but are detained pretrial in the Workhouse, which is in terrible condition, including lack of air conditioning and proper ventilation in these hot summer months. 

Ninety percent of felony cases never actually make it in front of a judge or jury. Ninety percent of people detained in the Workhouse in St. Louis have not been committed of a crime. Why is this a popular trend for those often unjustly punished and incarcerated? Many factors in this system, such as bail bonds and plea deals, prey on the poorest and most vulnerable in society. These individuals donʼt have enough money to get out of jail or for a defense attorney and canʼt afford any other options to receive justice.

The panel discussion following the film was moderated by Blake Strode, the Executive Director of ArchCity Defenders. Originally from St. Louis, he graduated from Harvard Law School in 2015 and then started his work with the organization, eventually, establishing the Civil Rights Litigation unit. This group has challenged debtors prisons, jail injustices, and prison brutality. The panelists included Mike Milton, the site manager for The Bail Project; Demetrice Davis, a member of the Close the Workhouse campaign; and Dr. Christopher Tinson, an associate professor of history and director of African American studies at Saint Louis University. Milton is a strong activist in St. Louis, advocating for reform for incarcerated men and providing them with necessities, such as housing equity. He also works for the #BeyondJail campaign, providing aftercare for people recently released from jail, and he is a co-chair of Faith for Justice, building a community of faith with a movement for Black lives. In addition to working as an electronics technician, Davis has personal experience with St. Louis City’s criminal injustice system, such as bail and the Workhouse, and now he has been moving to close this infamous jail. Lastly, Dr. Tinson has researched and taught extensively on Africana radical traditions, ethnic studies, incarceration, and race and sports. He authored Radical Intellect: Liberator Magazine and Black Activism in the 1960s and won the inaugural Pauli Murray Prize for best book in African American Intellectual History from the African American Intellectual History Society. 

In the panel, many important statistics stood out. Out of St. Louis City’s entire budget, 63% goes to public safety, whereas a very minimal amount goes to human services. The city prioritizes police and prisons over healthcare and help for individuals. 90% of the people in the Workhouse are there pretrial and thus legally innocent. The Workhouse is an old warehouse which uses solitary confinement, striking similar to Rikers Island. Rikers Island has often been related to Guantanamo Bay, the American military base prison detaining enemy combatants. The panelists explained that in these jails, there are fights, fights for water and ice, fights when people are sleeping, and dangerous fights and that inmates are “picked up on the street like strays, and go in with petty crimes, then leave with more serious crimes to protect themselves while inside jail.” However, a theme is that they are all fighting the same system and victimized by it, which causes physical fights in outrage of their conditions. Jails harm people, families, and communities, leaving lifelong impacts to all. Inmates are not fed properly, jail conditions are unhealthy, addictions spread, and homelessness increases. The Workhouse in St. Louis has destabilized Black communities. The organizations of the panelists ask how they can get them out and are starting with dismantling these systems of oppression.

When someone is arrested and/or accused of committing a crime, judges are able to set a cash bail amount to release that person until the trial. The purpose of cash bail is to incentivize people to go to their trial, but these amounts are too expensive, causing individuals to plead guilty, lose their trial, and stay in jail until their case is closed. This idea originated from the Constitution, but many problems have occurred from it. Specifically in St. Louis, individuals pay their bail or go to the Workhouse. In other words, two people identically charged can have drastically different outcomes due to their race and their income. Cash bail causes people to lose their income, impacts to legal counsel, and increases recidivism.

Pretrial detention forces people to take guilty pleas, leaving those in detention to be victimized by the system. For two years, 90.8 percent of those in the St. Louis jail were held because they could not afford the bail, pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges, and 84.7% of people who plead guilty did not have a lawyer. Also, the pretrial system in St. Louis is about 15 years behind the rest of the United States. Other cities release people who promise to go to court, which St. Louis does rarely. In St. Louis, 96% have to pay in order to be freed before their trial, which is 15% in Washington, D.C., 40% in New York City, and 60% in Philadelphia. Overall, 100% of jail growth is due to pretrial incarceration just in the past 20 years.

Another topic that came up on the panel is the aspect of private interests in jail. Prisons are money-makers. Telecom, food, and healthcare companies benefit greatly from jails and prisons, and many are employed by them. In addition to private prisons, public prisons also have private interests. The concern for St. Louis is that if the Workhouse gets better facilities, it will continue to function, when there are efforts to close it due its injustices on innocent people. St. Louis does not want another workhouse, and even the circuit attorney, mayor, and board of alderman have supported closing it. 

Potential solutions evaluated from the discussion are to evaluating judges and hold them accountable from their sentences, bails, cases, and trials. Another helpful proposal is to hire more prosecutors who are people of color because currently 90% are white. People of color should be fairly represented. Additionally, ArchCity Defenders and the other organizations represented at this event want to help people fight their cases and not run from them. They want to change the perception of “risks” to “needs,” helping individuals in succeeding with their cases, providing transportation to court, assisting in taking time off work, giving reminders of court dates, and other services. One person had to request off work eleven times to go to trial, so the organizations are putting in ways to better the system. Beyond this, they also advocate for transformative and compassionate public safety, decreasing crime and homelssness. Lastly, Dr. Tinson talked about how there are programs and classes to implement criminal justice reform, and he voiced the importance of academics and activism. The overarching thought of the event was to rethink the order of society to saves lives and communities.

In terms of social change and criminal justice reform, on January 28 of this year, ArchCity Defenders, Civil Rights Corps, Advancement Project National Office, and Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection filed a cash bail class-action lawsuit against St. Louis City, demanding inmates receive fair bail hearings. Then, on June 11, the presiding judge ruled it was unconstitutional to hold inmates without a fair bail hearing.

There is much to do in order to get rid of the injustices in the criminal system, but events like this one hosted by ArchCity Defenders allows for insights and initiatives to make needed change.

Learn, and get involved:

• https://www.archcitydefenders.org/
• https://www.closetheworkhouse.org/
• https://bailproject.org/
• https://www.netflix.com/title/80187052