On June 6, 2015, Kalief Browder died by suicide in his family’s home in the Bronx. He was 22 years old. For three years — from age 16 to 19 — Browder was locked up on Rikers Island for allegedly stealing a backpack. He spent two of those years in solitary confinement. He was never convicted of anything. The charges were eventually dropped.
Browder’s death wasn’t an accident or simply just a tragedy — it was murder by the system. His suicide was the predictable result of a system designed to break poor Black and Brown people.
Ten years later, federal judge Laura Taylor Swain has stripped New York City of control over Rikers, appointing a federal manager to run the jail complex. The judge’s message was clear: after years of promises and reforms, the city has proven it cannot stop the violence.
Browder’s death typifies Rikers Island’s systematic brutalization of young people of color .
Violence escalates after Browder’s death
A decade after Browder’s suicide, conditions on Rikers have only worsened. Guards attacked prisoners 6,784 times in 2023, up from 4,652 in 2016 — a 46% increase. Since 2022, 33 people have died in custody. Five people have already died this year.
Charizma Jones, 23, died in July 2024 at Elmhurst Hospital after jail staff repeatedly blocked medical personnel from accessing her cell while she suffered from what appeared to be scarlet fever. Elijah Muhammad, 31, died in July 2022 after being kept in isolation for over 30 hours — more than five times longer than department policy allowed.
Each person who died was someone’s child, parent, sibling, someone snatched from their community. Most were poor people of color who couldn’t afford bail. Like Browder, many were never convicted of anything — they died waiting for trials, killed by a system that treats the poor as disposable.
Right now, around 6,200 people are caged on Rikers. More than 3,000 have been diagnosed with mental illness, with over 600 having serious mental illness. Instead of getting treatment, they face the same violence and isolation that killed Browder.
Politicians protect the system that killed Browder
Mayor Eric Adams claims he wants to reform Rikers, but his actions prove otherwise. Manhattan federal judge Laura Taylor Swain found that the city had ignored court orders to stop the violence “for years, at times under circumstances that suggest bad faith” — legal language for saying the city has been lying about reform while people died.
Adams isn’t the first mayor to lie about Rikers. After Browder’s death sparked outrage, politicians promised to close the jail by 2027. The Close Rikers campaign — supported by thousands of New Yorkers horrified by Browder’s story — won that commitment from the city. But it was always a lie intended to quiet public anger.
The replacement jails won’t open until 2032 at the earliest. Construction costs have exploded from $9 billion to over $33 billion — money that could house every homeless person in the city multiple times over. Instead, it’s going to wealthy developers that profit from the misery of this city’s working class.
Meanwhile, Adams has made the housing crisis worse. New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board — with members directly appointed by Adams — has voted to approve rent hikes every year since 2022 on the city’s rent-stabilized housing, making the cost of living even more unaffordable for millions of tenants and even driving some into homelessness. On top of that, the mayor has only increased the NYPD budget, flooding the subway with cops to arrest the homeless with nowhere else to go. He has essentially criminalized homelessness and mental illness, packing Rikers fuller than ever impacting millions of working-class New Yorkers.The jail population is growing, not shrinking, because mass incarceration serves the ruling class.
Federal takeover is admission of city’s failure
After 14 years of lawsuits and nearly a decade of failed court monitoring, Judge Swain gave up on the city. Federal takeover was her last resort after every other attempt at reform failed.
But let’s be clear about why it took so long. Hundreds of people had to be beaten, stabbed, and killed before anyone with power acted. That’s because the people dying on Rikers don’t matter to the capitalist class who run this city. They’re poor, they’re Black and Brown, and they have no political power.
The federal takeover might reduce some violence, but it won’t change the fundamental problem: the exploitative nature of capitalism itself. Bail bondsmen make money keeping people locked up. Private contractors get rich building jails. Correction officer unions protect members who commit violence. Construction companies cash in on billion-dollar jail projects. Furthermore, under capitalism mass incarceration functions as a form of social control — a way to manage and intimidate “surplus populations” of unemployed and underemployed Black and Brown workers.
What alternatives exist?
If Rikers cannot be reformed, what are the alternatives?
Other cities have shown that investing in housing, healthcare, and education reduces crime more effectively than jails. Portugal decriminalized drug use and invested in treatment — as a result, overdose deaths fell by 80%, while people in Portugal are now 45 times less likely to die from an overdose compared with people in the U.S. Finland adopted a “Housing First” policy, giving homeless people apartments without preconditions — homelessness fell by 68% over 15 years, making it the only EU country where homelessness is declining.
New York City spends $556,000 per year to cage each person on Rikers — enough to provide full college tuition, housing, and healthcare. Instead of building more jails, that money could fund community mental health centers, job training programs, and affordable housing.
Browder’s legacy demands justice
Browder’s death sparked outrage because people recognized the injustice — a teenager destroyed for allegedly stealing a backpack while wealthy people commit massive financial crimes with impunity.
The same forces that killed Browder run jails across the country. The same politicians who lied about closing Rikers run cities everywhere. The same companies that profit from Rikers are building new jails in other states.
Ten years later, Browder should be alive — working, loving, building community. Instead, he’s a symbol of what this system does to poor kids who can’t buy their way out of trouble.
Kalief Brower’s case reminds us of what socialists have always known: the current capitalist system cannot be reformed. It is our job to organize for a socialist system that serves working people, not the wealthy elite who profit from our exploitation.
Feature image: Kalief Browder in New York City. Credit: Screenshot from ABC News
