PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Our congratulations to The Marshall Project - a source of many stories of interest to the readers of this Blog - for winning the Pulizer. (What an incredible achievement. HL) As a release from the Project tells us: "A Pulitzer prize is the highest honor in journalism. And today The Marshall Project won its first Pulitzer, for “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” by our staff writer Ken Armstrong and ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller. Their story won in the Explanatory Reporting category. And that’s not all. Tom Robbins of The
Marshall Project was also named a Pulitzer finalist, in the
Investigative Reporting category, for his series with New York Times writers Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz on the culture of violence in New York prisons.........."“An Unbelievable Story of Rape” and
Robbins’ articles on prison brutality remind us of the importance of
deep, patient reporting and great storytelling. These articles
underscore the critical role the media can play in sparking public
discourse about our system of crime and punishment. These stories have had real impact.
“Unbelievable” has become part of the curriculum at the police training
academy in Washington state, where the story unfolded, with police
instructors using it to teach young recruits how to treat rape victims
in ways that are both sensitive and smart. Hospital trauma units and
universities have told us how useful they found the article for the same
reasons. From the beginning, this piece generated enormous reader response. It also formed the basis of an hour-long episode on NPR’s “This American Life,” which aired in February. Our series on upstate prisons had impact,
too. The three prison guards whose brutality we documented decided to
accept a plea bargain immediately after the piece was published. The
state of New York moved to change the way it tracks inmate complaints,
to enable officials to identify problem officers more easily. Perhaps
most important, Attica prison promised to install 500 security cameras
to make it harder for guards to abuse inmates in future.
You can read more about these powerful stories here."https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#all/1542adbb000d8c98 "
See the kudos we recently (April 6, 2016) offered to The Marshall Project for it's making available it's fabulous well-organized cache of criminal justice materials at the link below: "PUBLISHER'S NOTE: It's time to salute the Marshall Project's superb
weekly posting on "Closing Argument: The Week in Justice," edited by
Andrew Cohen, "featuring highlights from the past week in criminal
justice." (My only complaint is that there is so much fine reading,
reporting and analysis that there is little time left during the weekend
for anything else); Indeed, I find that much of the content is
relevant to the subject matter of this Blog. Each weekly posting
contains "The Story of the Week," "The Best of the Marshall Project," and "The Best of the Rest."
The story of the week in today's weekly posting (Saturday April 8)
relates to the launch what promises to be an invaluable new source
of criminal justice information called 'The Record." As described by
editor Cohen: "You probably know by now that we launched The Record
this week. It's an online compilation of some of the best online
written (and audio and video) work about criminal justice we have found
since we started The Marshall Project in 2014. There are many reasons
why we did this; my favorite is that by making it easier for
journalists, lawyers, academics, and others to find criminal justice
stories we improve the chances that those engaged in the countless
debates to come will be armed with more historical context and
perspective, not to mention good, old-fashioned facts. That point was
emphatically made on Thursday— the very day we launched, right on cue — by Bill Clinton, whose sharp retort to "Black Lives Matter" protesters begged for a look back at the conditions and consequences of the 1994 Crime Bill (a category included
in The Record). The story of that law, like every other contentious
criminal justice policy, is complicated, more complicated than either
the protestors or the former president have made it out to be. If the
stories contained in The Record help illustrate the contours of those
complications, the nuances that get lost in the heat of the moment, the
background that helps explain why some themes suddenly rush to the
foreground, our work will have succeeded." As today's post indicates, The Record is "an on-line online library TMP staff has curated over the past two years of
some of the best criminal justice reporting on the internet. Here is a
14,000-entry collection of reporting about topics, including “sentencing
reform” and “death penalty”; events like the “Charleston Church
shooting,” and people, including “Kalief Browder” and our namesake,
“Thurgood Marshall." I am really impressed by the ease with which
"The Record" can be accessed. Just tap in the topic you are interested
in, sit back, and enjoy the trip!
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2016/04/the-marshall-project-kudos-to-marshall.ht
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2016/04/the-marshall-project-kudos-to-marshall.ht
