Is Kalief Browder’s Story A Case For Reform Or Abolition? (Part 3, The Bing)
“Is Kalief Browder’s Story a Case for Reform or Abolition?” is six part series following the episodes of “Time: The Kalief Browder Story,” in which the politics, realities, and necessary conditions of prison abolition will be considered in relation to Kalief Browder’s case and the greater context of the criminal justice system in America. This series will also discuss prison reform efforts under way and how they can reduce the harm of the system, or potentially reinforce or reinvent it. You can read the first installment here and the second piece here.
The third episode of Time: The Kalief Browder Story, is entitled “The Bing,” and it begins with the following quote from Kalief:
“Solitary confinement, it was just torture. Just being with myself, it was just torture”
There is more than sufficient evidence that solitary confinement is torture. This is something the international community has reached a consensus and even in the US the In Re Medley back in the in 1890’s determined that solitary confinement was too cruel of a punishment to impose upon individuals convicted of the death penalty.
The United Nations defines any period longer than 15 days straight in solitary confinement as “torture”
When Kalief was 17, his first extended stay in solitary confinement was over 300 days straight
While “The Bing,” focuses primarily on solitary confinement, it also places a great deal of emphasis on the ways in which prosecuting attorneys and New York state regulations can delay trials, even in cases as insubstantial as the unsubstantiated theft of a backpack. This phenomenon leads to prolonged periods of pre-trial detention, particularly in New York where the “Ready Rule.” Despite not being convicted of the crime for which he was charged, Kalief spent most of his three years in jail held in solitary confinement. The “Ready Rule,” would seem at least to a lay person, as though it might be at odds with the guarantees of the 6th Amendment.
As the prosecutors abused the “Ready Rule,” to push Kalief’s case back month after month after month, the entire time he’s living in solitary confinement, undergoing what the United Nations has clearly defined as torture. According to Criminal Defense Attorney, Kenneth Montgomery, “Prosecutors they don’t think about that, they have no concern about that. He’s not even human to them, that’s just a fact.” The logic behind this practice is of course the overwhelming probability that detainees will eventually plead guilty, regardless of their guilt or innocence. There is much about Kalief’s experience that is not exceptional in a system that at any given time holds about 80,000 people in solitary, close to 500,000 people in pre-trial detention, roughly 2.5 million people in some form of incarceration, and cycles approximately 12 million people through the county jail system annually. One of the most exceptional aspects of Kalief’s case is that he refused to take a plea bargain as a teenager even when he was subjected to prolonged torture at the hands of the state. As referenced in “The Bing,” in 97% of criminal cases, the detainee will enter into a plea bargain agreement with the state. It stands to reason that an even higher percentage of detainees would enter a plea bargain under the type of conditions that Kalief Browder was subjected to as an incarcerated child.
“We should be torturing people before they’re even tried? What country is that?” — Van Jones
“The Bing” goes through the psychological impacts of solitary confinement in some detail, but subject is really something that is difficult to do justice within a few minutes of a television show. There is not as much medical and psychiatric research on solitary confinement as their should be. Ironically, due to the constraints put on these studies and research there was perhaps more compelling research on it in 19th century Germany than there is in the American psychiatric community today. Nevertheless, there are recent studies, reports, and literature reviews on solitary confinement and its effects. There seems to be ample evidence that, while solitary’s effects are not uniform upon every detainee, it starkly increases the rates at which incarcerated people harm themselves, and that it contributes to a series of negative psychological effects. Unfortunately, like many things with prison, research is limited by the state which will not allow research upon inmates. Brain scans of inmates before and after solitary confinement should actually show the impact that solitary has on the brain, but judges will not allow such research to take place.
A disturbing irony is that both the scientific research field and zookeepers are required to house individuals together due to animal rights advocacy against the proven detrimental impacts of animals being confined in isolation. While prison guards may refer to teenage inmates as animals, the prison system does not extend them the same level of treatment that society mandates for animals in captivity.
Solitary confinement as a practice also is disproportionately used upon mentally ill people, which can lead to questions of whether the practice is causing, contributing, or merely an inappropriate response to the mental illness of the person detained. The state uses this conflation to its advantage to deny culpability in mistreating inmates, which could — and sometimes does — lead to expensive settlements especially in the case of pre-trial detainees in circumstances like Kalief’s.
Solitary confinement in California lead 30,000 inmates to go on a hunger strike in protest of the practice and California has agreed to “overhaul” the practice of solitary confinement as a result of this action and litigation. New York is undergoing a similar overhaul due to a settlement agreement with the ACLU. Last year an incarcerated person in Holman prison had the courage to send this message to the Incarcerated Worker’s Organizing Committee (IWOC)of the International Workers of the World:
The context of this IWOC tweet was that Kinetik Justice-Amun (Robert Earl Council) a prisoner who was already being held indefinitely in solitary confinement in Holman Prison had been moved to another prison where he would be brutalized before being moved to eventually a third prison. Along the way he would be denied water, he believed he was poisoned by the prison food provider, and would be placed in a “‘hot bay,’ dorm in which prisoners are forced to live in pairs in hot and squalid solitary confinement cells.” In communication with members of the Free Alabama Movement, Brian Sonenstein from Shadowproof outlined this process as did the San Francisco Bay View. These actions were taken as he and the Free Alabama Movement were working in solidarity with IWOC and other prisoner resistance organizations to coordinate a labor strike against prison slavery and were seen by the Free Alabama Movement as clear cases of retaliation.
The fundamental issue raised in the tweet was the 13th Amendment and the 8th Amendment standing in direct conflict with one another. This reality points to the hypocrisy of the entire criminal justice and prison system and applies to both prison slavery and solitary confinement. How is it that as a country we can say that there shall be no “cruel or unusual punishment” but also have the legalized enslavement of prisoners and pre-trial detainees? How can we say there shall be no cruel and unusual punishment for those convicted of crimes, and enact torture on both pre-trial detainees like Kalief and individuals convicted of a crime? While it is critical to examine why as a society we enact these horrors on people we classify as innocent, it is equally important to interrogate why we enact them upon those we classify as “guilty” and deserving of a punitive form of justice.
Prison abolitionists often point to these types of constitutional hypocrisy, these clear instances of a system of laws and courts which cannot rationally defend itself against deep Socratic questioning, to advocate for total and absolute prison abolition and nothing less. There are however impassioned reform efforts to end solitary confinement and there is a growing movement to abolish prison slavery. It is interesting that on SpikeTV’s website for Kalief they only highlight the movement to stop solitary confinement for kids. While it is certainly a worthy endeavor to advocate for winnable reforms when we can, one of the pitfalls of this approach is the way it reinforces the “good prisoner” and “bad prisoner” tropes which are overly simplistic and lend credibility of the institution that is responsible for enacting the violence.
While we can all agree that it is not a good thing to torture children, we should also be able to agree that it is not a good thing to torture adults. While we can all agree that it is not a good thing to enslave those who have not yet been convicted of a crime, we should also be able to agree that it is not a good thing to enslave those who have been convicted of a crime. Human rights and basic human dignity should not be contingent upon the way a fallible system classifies us. Just as race, gender, and class are social constructions it is important to understand that criminality is one that we must interrogate with equal vigor.