Criminal Law Assignment: Case Analysis Of Kalief Browder- End of Solitary Confinement

Question

Task: Prepare a criminal law assignment presenting a case of “Kalief Browder: End of Solitary Confinement”.

Answer

Abstract
The jail, according to Rikers, is in chaos and should be shut down because the circumstances are unacceptable for a person being. The researcher of this criminal law assignment explained the criminal justice measures that must be done against the offender in Rikers Island. Kalief Browder, a robber who had served the previous three years on Rikers Island. He had been imprisoned in 2010 for a crime he said he had not really committed when he was sixteen years old. Browder had been telling them details of being assaulted by cops and prisoners on Rikers Island.

Introduction
Correction officials have been made scapegoats for the mayhem at Rikers Island, which includes 14 inmate deaths in the year which includes facility fires, and assaults on inmates and employees. As per Boscio, the city's jail is highly risky for inmates and correctional officers due to holding convicts with gang affiliations. Even the presence of cell doors is difficult to securely lock, and staffing shortages are the presence of two factors. Stabbings and slashing had also increased by 450 percent over the previous year. Rikers claims that the jail is in disarray and that it should be closed down because the conditions are unfit for a human being. In this assignment, the researcher will be discussing the criminal justice that needs to be taken against the criminal at Rikers.

Background of the Study
In this discussion first of all the researcher will be discussing a robber named Kalief Browder who had spent a total of three years on Rikers Island. He had been arrested for a robbery he said he had not committed when he was sixteen years old in the springtime of 2010. Then he spent over a thousand days on Rikers Island, awaiting a trial that never came. He spent nearly two years in solitary confinement during that time (Johnson, 2018). During which he tried suicide multiple times. In February of that year, he pulled his bedsheet into shreds.

Then he had knotted them together to make a noose. After making a noose he had attempted to hang himself from his cell's ceiling light. Browder tried suicide again six months after leaving Rikers. He attempted suicide from a bannister at home this time, and he was admitted to the mental hospital.

He stopped attending classes at Bronx Community College around two months after my report about him was published. He was incarcerated at Harlem Hospital's psychiatric unit for the Christmas period. He was re-hospitalized one day following his release at St. Barnabas. He did not seem like himself when he went to meet him on January 9th. He was emaciated, restless, and paranoid (Sardar, 2019). He seemed to be doing well over the next few months. He cycled his bike to school every day, no longer having panic attacks when sitting in a classroom, and achieving higher grades than the previous class.

Browder had been telling them stories of being abused on Rikers Island by officers and inmates. The accounts were upsetting, and they did not really get what he'd gone through until they saw a security film of an officer assaulting him and a big group of convicts battering and punching him in April. As per the city's law department, Kalief Browder's narrative inspired significant improvements to the court process to prevent this thing from happening again. Everyone hopes that this agreement to maintain ongoing changes will help the Browder family find some closure.

Discussion
Browder denied the allegations, but he was transported to the Rikers Island jail compound to face trial since he was on probation for a previous offence. Browder's family was initially unable to pay the $2,999 bond necessary to secure his release, although they were able to do so by the time he was released. Browder's eligibility had been pronounced ineligible by a court. Throughout his three-year incarceration, Browder defended his actions by spending more than half of that time in solitary confinement (Gouldin, 2020). After Browder's case was dragged out in the Bronx court system for years without the need of a trial where a judge dismissed all claims against him.

Browder's incarceration and death drew widespread attention, prompting demands for policy reform in NY will include measures to lessen the harmful effects of detention on young adults and to emphasise the hazards of solitary confinement. While the settlement negotiated this week is the most recent action taken by New York City authorities to atone for Browder's murder, the city has been admonished for failing to follow through on prior promises. Browder began pushing for criminal justice reform in NY shortly after his release. They believe that his case brought to light several flaws in the city's criminal justice system.

The present case involves everything from the failure to provide individuals with a criminal procedure to the unnecessary problems of bail system.
The narrative of Browder's extended detention and maltreatment at Rikers Island comes at a time when national attention is focused on police violence against African Americans. The victim had told the New Yorker that while he was not in solitary confinement. He was beaten by guards and other inmates were portrayed as just another example of how the judicial system irreversibly changes the lives of people of colour (Coppola, 2020). Browder's mother, Venida had died suddenly in 2016, it is serving as a dramatic reminder of how this trauma further devastates black families.

Browder's case has been frequently brought up by New York City politicians when addressing the city's reform initiatives. Rikers Island stopped putting between 17 and 16 years old in solitary confinement in December 2014 which was almost months before Browder's death Giles-(Perkins, 2019). City authorities stated on the year 2015 was under solitary confinement might never be utilized on anybody under the age of 21.

These improvements have been lauded, but the city's efforts have been marred by problems. The NY Times revealed in July that while Nyc was no putting children in solitary confinement at Rikers Island. The island was allowing people under the age of 22 to be transported to upstate jails that did. After adolescent convicts filed a complaint in 2018 the case was alleging that they were held in isolation and abused after being transported out of Rikers. The city has abandoned efforts to keep 18 to 21-year-olds in Rikers apart from the main adult population (Giles-Perkins, 2019). The city said that the decision was part of a larger attempt to lower the city's jail population and that young adults should indeed be detained with older people in some situations.

As per the above scenario, it is seen that Browder’s surviving family members had claimed that the city has failed to follow through on its declared reform commitments. Browder's older brother, Akeem, a former mayoral candidate, continues to demand that the Rikers Island facility be closed immediately. Browder's mother passed away a year and a half ago, but he has six siblings and their father to look for him. The family will continue to advocate for prison reform to address issues such as solitary confinement and the placement of younger offenders with older inmates. Salaam, who served time on Rikers Island overall conditions are cruel which is mainly seen in solitary confinement had enforced for petty offences such as having an extra Bible in the cell.

Kalief Browder was physically, emotionally, and spiritually scarred beyond repair during his time on Rikers Island. Students in her law enforcement classes were introduced to the story Browder Story. Browder's condition where she claimed was caused by a perfect storm of institutional issues and injustices. Browder's case was unique in that he declined to plead guilty on multiple occasions (Goff, 2017). Juveniles are more prone than adults to admit guilt to crimes they did not commit for a variety of reasons which include being more vulnerable to prosecutors' persuasion and being less knowledgeable and about rights including the ramifications of a guilty plea.

Browder's right to a speedy trial was also violated since prosecutors frequently requested postponements, but no one pushed for his release during the years of delays. He would have spent significantly less time in prison if he had pleaded guilty. People plead guilty because they are afraid, not because they have evidence. People are discouraged from fighting charges based on what is right and fair. It will find out that whether prosecutors can properly establish their case. There was pressure to make a false confession to a crime that one did not commit. Salaam had apprehended a day after the others had made a terrifying verbal confession after hearing one of his co-defendants getting thrashed in the next cell.

The Association of Correction Officers' have linked staffing shortages at Rikers to harm sustained on its employees by out-of-control convicts and has called for "immediate action to lower the numbers of criminals. About 5,599 of the city's 5,999 detainees were awaiting trial. Even it has attributed the city's crime issues to pending cases not being completed quickly enough to claim mocked by the judicial.

The coronavirus has infected more than 2,200 Department of Correction employees so far, has created the contours of today's crisis. This has resulted in major staffing shortages. The conditions at Rikers deteriorated as a result of a large number of sick employees. This has resulted in a negative feedback loop (MehChu, 2020). The loop occurred because more correction officers are now permitted unlimited sick time. Despite the fact, they were previously subjected to strong restrictions on calling in sick in unusually large numbers. According to jail officials, on average of 1999 officers were all out sick otherwise unable to work on a single day during the summertime. They need to know what their goal is and what they need to make Rikers a safe place for those who are detained or who work here because it is currently unsafe (Coppola, 2020). The escalating issue has been brought to light over the last week by advocates, news stories, and a federal inspector who expressed "grave concerns" about the city's jails. Even the officials rushing for solutions as Rikers prepare to close by 2026.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced reforms this week that require absent guards to obtain a medical letter if they are out for further than a day. All of these will be speeding up inmate intake protocols and correcting infrastructural issues such as damaged doors. The jail warden needs to examine the overall behaviours officers who are taking of the imamates in Rikers Island.

The officers who are in charge in Rikers Island are not at all taking care of the inmates properly because of violence inside the cell. Participants in the interviews believed that there is a lack of cohesiveness among diverse ethnic groups exacerbated social tensions, which were fostered by a lack of cultural understanding, continuous disputes among ethnicities that arrived from their native countries, and the notion that some ethnic groups had gotten more government assistance than others.

It is a method of seeing interactions between people as a system. In this conceptual framework, the individual's social and physical components are appraised in the context of their surroundings. These habitats include the natural world, human-constructed reality, and the cultural and social framework in which the creature lives. Individuals and families have an influence on these environments as well.

Conclusion
From the overall analysis of the report, it could be found out that this divisive approach involves international research into the minute aspects of the entertainer's manipulation of reality before to the commission of a crime, treating them as astonishingly existence and seductively captivating. The actor is restrained as a reasonable response to these internal conceptions, rather than as a result of qualities more commonly associated with rapid and dramatic criminal behaviour. The assumption that sensual attractions and moral restoration feelings are at the heart of the criminal's immediate experience and must be addressed in theories of crime is predicated on tales of adults and children killing each other. The Lucifer Effect shows a remarkable leap from kindness to wickedness because it provides as a backdrop for examining early human transitions. While individuals should be held accountable for their conduct, suspects consider the circumstances in which their behaviors are influenced. Avoiding the idea that people are immune to situational factors should also be part of the precautionary measures. The forces are aware of the increased effectiveness of Situational forces in unfamiliar environments and work to dispel the notion that people are immune to them. The prison community's standards were supposed to promote a calm environment, but with the assumption of the guards' and convicts' titles and attire, the guards used inventive evil or inactivity to impose their unique energy because convicts become reasonably obedient.

Reference
Coppola, A. (2020). RE: The Pretrial Risk Assessment-How New Jersey's Bail Overhaul Is Shaping Bail Reform across the Country. Cardozo J. Equal Rts. & Soc. Just., 27, 87.

Giles-Perkins, A. (2019). Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied: Holding Cash Bail Unconstitutional. Pub. Int. L. Rep., 25, 102.

Goff, L. M. (2017). Pricing justice: the wasteful enterprise of America's bail system. Brooklyn Law Review, 82(2), 825.
Gouldin, L. P. (2020). Reforming Pretrial Decision-Making. Criminal law assignmentWake Forest L. Rev., 55, 857. Johnson, D. (2018). Justice for Kalief Browder: Correcting Crooked Corrections and Criminal Justice Systems. U. Cent. Fla. Dep't Legal Stud. LJ, 1, 147.
MehChu, N. (2020). Nickels and Dimes? Rethinking the Imposition of Special Assessment Fees on Indigent Defendants. NCL Rev., 99, 1477.
Sardar, M. B. (2019). Give Me Liberty or Give Me... Alternatives?: Ending Cash Bail and Its Impact on Pretrial Incarceration. Brooklyn Law Review, 84(4), 9.