On a cold night in 2010, a boy is stopped by the police while walking home from a party in the Bronx.

He's only 16. He's been stopped by the police before, but this time is different.

In a special four-part series, the Generation Y podcast unravels the story of Khalif Browder,

a young boy who was falsely accused of stealing a backpack and held without bail at Rikers Island for three years.

During that time, he endured regular abuse by prison staff and inmates and was held in solitary confinement for more than 700 consecutive days.

Three years later, Khalif was released, never once, having stood trial.

Khalif's case ended up being a catalyst for change in the use of solitary confinement against minors and federal prisons, but there's still a long way to go.

It said that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but where is the line between due process and cruelty?

You're about to hear a clip from this four-part series on Generation Y. While you're listening, follow Generation Y wherever you get your podcasts.

And hey, prime members, you can listen and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

Most people, if they were to be jailed or incarcerated for 30 days, they would lose their house, they would lose their job, they would lose everything, just 30 days behind bars.

There are so many other punishments, there are so many other impacts that incarceration have that no one weighs out because we just think, time behind bars, we just think, did the punishment fit the crime?

And then on top of that, people want jailhouse justice. They want prisoners to suffer more while they're behind bars, as if they're not suffering already.

And I've spent time in the military, I've been isolated from my family and friends. I can't imagine what it would be like to be put in solitary for even a few days, much less months or years.

So we've already talked about the harm that solitary confinement does. And then when you add in the fact that Khalif Browder was just picked off the street, right?

Yeah. No proof of any kind of crime, of laws broken, just picked up off the street and put behind bars.

Never convicted of anything. Right. And then he's punished anyway. Yeah.

I think this is the way to the case, Justin, that we are somehow in this country okay with punishing people who we haven't even convicted.

We're just going to punish them. It seems wrong to me. And I don't understand how this isn't, you know, isn't causing more people to stand up and say something.

I mean, we're already to jump and maybe try and get someone fired from their job because they said something we didn't like. Right.

I guess it's not that much more of a stretch to say we're okay with someone who somehow maybe you're not sure, probably not even, you know, not enough information to even guess on whether they broken a law or not.

We're okay with them being put in solitary confinement and being beaten and starved because people seem to think that it's

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