After InvestigateWest, with support from the Fund, uncovered widespread sexual abuse in Idaho prisons, the state’s Department of Corrections is working with state legislators to change a state law that makes it difficult to prosecute prison staff. The director of the prison system also said the state is updating its policies and working to ensure that people who are incarcerated ...
Following an investigation by Robert Lopez, with support from the Fund, which found that children are working in unsafe conditions in California’s agriculture industry, officials announced changes. For the Los Angeles Times and Capital & Main, Lopez interviewed dozens of young farmworkers who described toiling in fields that reeked of chemicals, laboring for piece-rate wages that paid less than minimum ...
Brightline, the nation’s only privately owned city-to-city passenger train, has failed to implement basic safety measures – and 182 people have died on the railway in the last eight years, according to an investigation by WLRN (the NPR member station in South Florida) and the Miami Herald, with support from the Fund. Reporters spent a year combing federal rail data, ...
Local governments across California are ignoring a state law that was supposed to add oversight to crowded homeless shelters after reports of violence, vermin and health hazards, according to a CalMatters investigative series with support from the Fund. While cities scramble to address sprawling street encampments, the most immediate alternatives – homeless shelters promising nightly refuge – continue to generate ...
California sharply cut back its enforcement of outdoor heat-protection laws as extreme heat intensified in recent years, endangering farmworkers and others who toil in scorching temperatures, according to an investigation by Robert J. Lopez, with support from the Fund. The report, co-published in the Los Angeles Times and Capital & Main, found that on-site safety inspections by Cal/OSHA dropped by ...
Several grantees recently received awards for stories they produced with grants and other support from the Fund, including: NPR’s Station Investigations Team, Columbia Journalism Investigations, the Ohio Newsroom and WVXU received a first-place award from the National Headliner Awards for their investigation of prosecutorial misconduct in Ohio. The Maine Monitor received a New England Newspaper and Press Association Award for ...
Idaho’s governor signed into law two reforms that were introduced after InvestigateWest uncovered serious misconduct in facilities for troubled youth. One of the new laws will create a state oversight agency for youth homes, and the other will establish guidelines for placing troubled youth in group homes. In addition, the legislature commissioned an official investigation into oversight of youth treatment ...
The state House and Senate in Hawaii each passed bills this month that would significantly change the legal process for taking children from their parents when they’re accused of abuse or neglect. With support from the Fund, Honolulu Civil Beat published a series of reports investigating the state’s child-welfare system. That series showed that children are frequently removed from their ...
The U.S. Marshals Service and a county sheriff’s office helped execute a search warrant of a medical-device warehouse near Atlanta this month, just two weeks after Grist reported that warehouse staff were unknowingly exposed to a carcinogenic chemical. With support from the Fund, Naveena Sadasivam and Lylla Younes reported that ambulances were routinely called to the warehouse when employees had ...
An investigation by the Times Union, based in Albany, revealed that serious police car crashes resulting in property damage, injury or deaths increased dramatically over the last decade in New York. With support from the Fund, the Times Union team analyzed state and federal data, obtained crash records from eight of the largest police departments in the state and interviewed ...