Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life. A rare account of life inside the notorious jail for adolescents on Rikers Island

Jennifer Gonnerman, Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life. The New Yorker, 6 October 2014. “In the early hours of Saturday, May 15, 2010, ten days before his seventeenth birthday, Kalief Browder and a friend were returning home from a party in the Belmont section of the Bronx. They walked along Arthur Avenue, the main street of Little Italy, past bakeries and cafés with their metal shutters pulled down for the night. As they passed East 186th Street, Browder saw a police car driving toward them. More squad cars arrived, and soon Browder and his friend found themselves squinting in the glare of a police spotlight. An officer said that a man had just reported that they had robbed him. ‘I didn’t rob anybody,’ Browder replied. ‘You can check my pockets.'”

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Rikers: Where Mental Illness Meets Brutality in Jail

Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz, Rikers: Where Mental Illness Meets Brutality in Jail. The New York Times, 14 July 2014. “After being arrested on a misdemeanor charge following a family dispute last year, Jose Bautista was unable to post $250 bail and ended up in a jail cell on Rikers Island. A few days later, he tore his underwear, looped it around his neck and tried to hang himself from the cell’s highest bar. Four correction officers rushed in and cut him down. But instead of notifying medical personnel, they handcuffed Mr. Bautista, forced him to lie face down on the cell floor and began punching him with such force, according to New York City investigators, that he suffered a perforated bowel and needed emergency surgery.”

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