Why Everyone Needs to Know What Happened to Sixteen-Year-Old Kalief Browder

I had just finished another day teaching when I reached Jenner Furst, director of the much-anticipated documentary film Time: The Kalief Browder Story.

The movie tells the story of injustice done to sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder, a New York teen arrested and jailed for years on Rikers Island. Browder awaited trial for three years after he was accused of stealing a backpack. Of those three years, he spent almost two in solitary confinement, seeing and speaking to no one for twenty-three hours a day, and suffering abuse from correction officers and other prisoners. Two years after he was released, he took his own life.

Kalief Browder, NYC Teen Jailed For Years With No Conviction, Says Rikers Guards 'Starved' Him

In March of 2012, Kalief Browder says he ripped the sheets off his bed inside a jail cell at Rikers Island, and fashioned a noose from the ceiling. According to Browder, just as he was about to hang himself, New York City Correction officers stormed into the cell and grabbed him, tackled him to the bed, and punched him repeatedly.

Browder, who joined HuffPost Live for an interview Monday, says he was punished for the suicide attempt, one of five or six such attempts during his three-year stay at the notoriously violent New York City jail. Correction officers "starved" him, he says, withholding up to four meals at a time while he languished in solitary confinement.

And all for a crime for which he was never convicted.

Teen Thrown In Violent New York Prison For Years Without Ever Having Been Convicted

Bronx resident Kalief Browder was walking home from a party when he was abruptly arrested by New York City police officers on May 14, 2010. A complete stranger said Browder had robbed him a few weeks earlier and, consequently, changed the 16-year-old's life forever.

Browder was imprisoned for three years before the charges were dropped in June 2013, according to a WABC-TV Eyewitness News investigation.

At the time of the teen's arrest, Browder's family was unable to pay the $10,000 bail. He was placed in the infamously violent Rikers Island correctional facility, where he remained until earlier this year.