In its continuing coverage of the Washington state’s foster care system, InvestigateWest, in partnership with the news site Crosscut.com, reports that state officials have nearly doubled the amount it pays to secure beds for children, from $325 per night to $600. Recently obtained payment records and confidential but incomplete data obtained by InvestigateWest shows how some host families are making a ...
Further investigation by WNIN and Side Effects Public Media calls into question the work of a government-hired psychologist on thousands of Social Security Administration disability claims. The news outlets had previously reported about concerns that the psychologist might have falsified at least two dozen mental competency exams related to criminal court cases.. The scrutiny arose after he was convicted of falsifying one such ...
FIJ/Schuster diversity fellow Lottie Joiner completes her series on recidivism for USA Today by looking at the experiences of men incarcerated in Louisiana, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country. In her latest multimedia installments for her “Policing the USA” project, Joiner features former felons getting help from a program called “First 72+,” which is trying ...
A team of 18 reporters from 11 national and local publications across Colombia launched an ambitious investigation into the work of 20 local comptroller’s offices (hipervínculo en español) and the apparent conflicts of interests in the auditing of government agencies and the public treasury. The investigation, led by Colombian NGO Consejo de Redacción and published by El Espectador, found that comptrollers’ ...
A seven-month investigation by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting revealed what it called “a Kentucky preacher-turned-politician’s web of lies.” The package, written by by R.G. Dunlop and Jacob Ryan, exposed what the center said was a series of deceptions over decades by state Rep. Dan Johnson, a self-anointed “pope, bishop and minister to outcasts.” The FIJ-sponsored investigation partly focused on ...
In a story for The New Yorker, FIJ/Schuster diversity fellow Lisa Armstrong reports on the movement to end solitary confinement for juveniles. Her piece, “A Teen-Ager in Solitary Confinement,” chronicles the plight of Jermaine Gotham, who was sixteen the first time he was locked in “the box” in an upstate New York county jail. In 2016, President Obama banned solitary confinement ...
Southern New Mexico’s fragile behavioral health system has taken many hits in recent years and doesn’t meet the region’s needs, according to a series of reports by NMPolitics.net in collaboration with the Las Cruces Sun-News and KRWG News. Law enforcement is increasingly tasked with handling crises they can’t fix, data shows. Policymakers have taken some steps to help, but progress ...
Even after Hurricane Harvey, the best efforts by Harris County officials to purchase the most flood-prone homes won’t make a dent in the larger problem, according to the Texas Tribune in a collaboration with Reveal and ProPublica. Despite the obvious need and high demand, Harris County, home to Houston, is plagued by challenges endemic to buyout programs. Limited funds, competing ...
As more people seek information about opioid addiction and its consequences, finding unbiased information is extremely difficult, according to a new report by Cat Ferguson for The Verge. In fact, some popular publications that distribute information about addiction and treatment are doubling as marketing arms for treatment centers. Ferguson, who is pursing a broader investigation into how rehab marketers manipulate ...
Leaf blowers and other gas-powered lawn and garden machines emit surprisingly large amounts of smog-forming chemicals. But scant research exists on the potential risks to the mostly low-paid immigrant workers who use the equipment for many hours each week. FairWarning commissioned tests that found that levels of hazardous ultra-fine particles were as much as 50 times higher around the machines ...