In October 2018, Carolina Public Press, a nonprofit news outlet, took a look at sexual assault conviction rates in North Carolina. What they found were outdated, ineffective laws that blurred the lines of consent and made it harder for offenders to be convicted. “We looked at court data – a 4½-year data set – and analyzed it for the first ...
It all starts with our grantees – the reporters and investigative journalists who commit their lives to uncovering, unraveling and documenting the stories that impact the world most. From migrant abuse at the border to the Flint, Michigan, water crisis and beyond, our grantees reported on a diverse array of issues in 2019. Below, we give you a breakdown of ...
Reporter and FIJ grantee Rachel Nielsen investigated the complaints of foster parents in Washington state who say government caseworkers have created a culture of fear. The foster parents say they are being intimidated by state officials over trivial issues. State officials have held two meetings with groups of foster parents, but there have been no changes, according to records obtained ...
For more than 12 years, Washington State Patrol troopers have been searching drivers from minority communities, particularly Native Americans, five times more often than whites, FIJ grantees Jason Buch and Joy Borkholder, report for InvestigateWest. Their investigation also found that although there is a state law requiring that officers file reports on the race of drivers they stop, state troopers ...
Even as the immigration court system becomes more and more backlogged — rising to more than 1 million cases in September — and detention facilities managed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have hit record levels, holding more than 50,000 people nationwide, officials are seeking much higher bonds for immigrants or refusing them altogether, FIJ grantee Paul Ingram reports for ...
In 1988, Erin Hunter was convicted of a murder in New Orleans he claimed to know nothing about after a trial that took place in a single morning. Years later, the detective who investigated the case went to federal prison for extortion, the prosecutor remembered the single eyewitness as being of “dubious character,” and investigators suggested Hunter was set up. ...
For decades, anti-government and white supremacist groups have been attempting to recruit police officers – and the authorities themselves aren’t even certain about the scale of the problem, FIJ grantees Varnham O’Regan and Maddy Crowell, report for The Guardian. Hank Willis Thomas’ Raise Up statue at the National Memorial For Peace And Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Photograph: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images ...
For local law enforcement, health care for inmates can be a burden. For one doctor, it has been the opportunity of a lifetime. FIJ grantee Max Blau spent a year investigating how Dr. Carlo Musso, Georgia’s former deathrow doctor, built a medical empire in Southern jails. His stories were published in Atlanta Magazine and the Georgia Telegraph. Illustration by Mike ...
Despite alarmingly high levels of lead in the soil of a mostly poor, largely African American community in Atlanta that is now an EPA Superfund “removal action” site, there has been no effort by state or local officials to test children for contamination. An investigation by Georgia Health News, the Georgia News Lab and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution brought the story ...
Nearly one in four Detroit homeowners owes more in delinquent property taxes than they did three years ago despite being a part of a county program designed to help them get out of debt and avoid foreclosure, according to a Detroit News analysis. The payment plans, with lower interest rates and an extended five-year repayment deadline, were a solution devised by officials, including Mayor Mike Duggan, to get homeowners ...