Akeem Browder Says NO to Kathy Hochul's Criminal Justice Reform Rollbacks

The story of the late Kalief Browder helped inspire the movement to dramatically reduce the use of cash bail for people charged with crime. In 2010, Kalief was thrown into Rikers for allegedly stealing a backpack at the age of 16. He refused to take a guilty plea and was held there for 3 years awaiting a trial. His case was eventually dismissed. But, he was so traumatized by his experience at Rikers that he took his own life after he was released. His older brother, Akeem Browder, has committed his life to incarceration reform from Rikers to Albany. Akeem is the founder of the Kalief Browder Foundation, which operates a youth program in the penal colony. The foundation also helps to organize city and state-wide campaigns for criminal justice reform and played a key role in winning a historic bail reform law in 2019. Akeem talks to us about what Rikers is like today and what Governor Kathy Hochul’s last-minute plan to gut some of New York’s landmark criminal-justice reforms.