Spike TV has announced that it’s working with Jay Z to develop a six-part documentary series about Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old high school kid from New York who was arrested in 2010 for allegedly stealing a backpack. Browder spent three years at Rikers Island waiting for a trail, with two of those years spent in solitary confinement, before the case was eventually dismissed in 2013. Browder killed himself two years later, prompting calls for New York to reform its criminal justice system. The press release from Spike says that Browder’s story “and the challenges it poses to our understanding of American freedoms” will be “at the heart” of this series.
Titled Time: The Kalief Browder Story, the series is set to debut on Spike in January of 2017. The press release also refers to it as an “important television event” that will take a “comprehensive look at Browder’s story using first-person accounts, archival footage, and cinematic recreations of key scenes” from his life. There will also be interviews with family members, friends, politicians, and “social reformers.” In a statement, Jay Z referred to Browder as a “modern day prophet” who “lost his life because of a broken system.”