Annual Report 2015 Carroll Bogert President Stats Letter from the President
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CHANGING THE NARRATIVE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE Annual Report 2015 Carroll Bogert President Stats Letter from the President Bill Keller Editor-in-Chief Our criminal justice system is broken. It is plagued by Board of Directors race and class disparities at every stage from arrest to Neil Barsky Fred Cummings incarceration. Prisons are overcrowded and make little Nicholas Goldberg Nicole Gordon effort at rehabilitation. Jails have become dumping Jeffrey Halis Laurie Hays grounds for addicts and the mentally ill. In too many James Leitner communities, people fear the police rather than turn to If you’ve opened our annual report, you probably William L. McComb Jonathan Moses them for protection. don’t need persuading that the American criminal Ben Reiter justice system is in crisis. The statistics tell the story. Advisory Board The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other major country despite the fact Soffiyah Elijah that violent crime is near 40-year lows. Even in the bitterly divided world of American Andrew Jarecki politics, both liberals and conservatives have vowed Marc Levin U.S. Joan Petersilia their commitment to reform. Achieving it will CHINA David Simon Bryan Stevenson RUSSIA require hard work: from advocates, criminal justice INDIA experts, law enforcement, the judiciary, and yes, BRAZIL good and skilfull politicians. It will also take great journalism. No and hedge fund manager, launched The social problem has ever been solved Marshall Project based on his belief that without shining a light into some dark the criminal justice system is a national corners. That’s what The Marshall Project disgrace and high-quality journalism was born to do. In just two years, we’ve could help elevate the issue. Carroll, once 2,200,000 published approximately 650 criminal a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, justice stories and worked with a diverse spent nearly two decades at Human people are behind bars in the United States. Another range of media partners. Rights Watch before feeling impelled Credits We’ve had an amazing launch. In to focus on America’s biggest human Cover image by 4,700,000 are on probation or parole, which limits our first year, President Barack Obama rights problem: criminal justice. We’re Jabin Botsford of their ability to find work or housing, and to vote. granted us an exclusive interview. By proud to work with one of the country’s the Washington 18 months, we’d won our first Pulitzer. preeminent journalists, our Editor-in- Post. Unbelievable We’ve prompted federal investigations, Chief Bill Keller, in leading The Marshall illustration and informed a Supreme Court opinion, Project. photograph by helped improve police training, and Our aim is to create and sustain a sense Wesley Allsbrook gotten cameras installed in a prison of urgency about criminal justice. We and Benjamin where abuse was rampant. Along the hope you will find a way to help. Rasmussen. way, we’ve told fresh and important Features stories and given voice to Americans 6,000,000 are blocked 90 percent of criminal Roughly 80,000 are kept illustration by Tyler who were not being heard in our national from voting, 1,500,000 defendants qualify as in solitary confinement Boss. Audience conversation. illustration by in Florida alone. indigent. 5 out of 6 in a 6’x8’ cell for 23 Neil Barsky Carroll Bogert We both come to this issue with Founder and President Wesley Allsbrook. people awaiting trial hours a day. Some are can’t post bail. held there for years. hopeful hearts. Neil, a former reporter chairman of the board Thurgood Marshall photograph by Cecil0 J.2 Williams. 02 03 About The Marshall Project is a nonprofit newsroom Subjects devoted to covering We Cover criminal justice. Bail Reform Death Penalty Investigative reporting is the core of Drug Laws what we do. Our reporters dive into stories that other media have missed Families of Incarcerated People or misunderstood. We often spend months interviewing sources, digging Gun Violence through documents, filing Freedom of Health and Mental Information Act requests, and visiting Health in Prisons jails, prisons, courtrooms, and police Immigration stations around the United States. Indigent Defense We keep a close eye on breaking criminal Juvenile Justice justice news, looking for opportunities Mass Incarceration to provide context or analysis. Since our launch in November 2014, we Money & Politics have published a steady stream of Policing stories, including profiles, interviews, commentaries, and first-person Prison Conditions narratives. Racial Disparities Sentencing Reform Our journalism has had impact around the country. Solitary Confinement Our Pulitzer Prize- A Record of Trouble The Long & Winding Unfreed told the heart- U.S. Supreme Court After we published Following the A Boy Among Men No Country for Young After we published winning investigation, exposed fraud, violence, Detainment of Diana wrenching story of a Justice Stephen Breyer This Boy’s Life, on publication of The revealed the terrible Men, which followed Attica’s Ghosts on An Unbelievable Story and inadequate care at Ramos followed Colorado man who is cited The Prosecutor life sentences without Deadly Consequence consequences of a 17-year-old placed brutality at New York’s of Rape, was featured halfway houses in Los a woman held in mistakenly released & the Snitch, our piece parole for juveniles, of Solitary with a housing a teenager in a in a juvenile detention infamous upstate on This American Life, Angeles. Shortly after immigration detention from prison, remakes on the execution of a Amnesty International Cellmate, which told prison full of adult men facility for getting into a prison, the Department and is used in trainings our story ran, state in Arizona for years, himself as a family man potentially innocent took up Taurus of a murder in Illinois in Michigan. The article, fight at school, helped of Justice launched an for police and first officials questioned the despite having and upstanding citizen man, in an opinion on Buchanan’s case for that resulted from read by nearly half a propel reform in West investigation, cameras responders. Dept. of Corrections committed no real — and then is sent lethal injection. clemency in Louisiana. doubling up inmates in million people, brought Virginia. A few months were installed inside the about our findings. crime. back. solitary confinement, new awareness to rape after our piece ran, the stairwells, and the three the Bureau of Prisons in prison. state passed a bill to guards finally pleaded vowed to limit the reduce these practices. guilty. 04 practice. 05 Q&A with the Editor Products Bill Keller, editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project, The Marshall Project is a leader in worked for The New York Times from 1984 to 2014 digital innovation. We have built tools as a reporter, op-ed columnist and editor. As a to curate the best news from around correspondent, he covered the end of apartheid in the web and help journalists unearth South Africa and the collapse of the Soviet Union. data on criminal justice issues that is often buried on various government Leaving The New York Times after 30 Do you think nonprofit journalism is the websites. years must’ve been a big adjustment… wave of the future? The biggest change was going from a I think it’s one wave, especially when it Next to Die is a haunting interactive that newsroom of 1,300 journalists, with about comes to the deep, watchdog reporting profiles every person scheduled to be put to 1.5 million paying subscribers — numbers that — because it takes patience and death in the U.S. Working with media outlets that open doors and assure attention — to, money — is withering at all but the best in Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Florida, in the beginning, some empty desks, a few for-profit news organizations. We’ve Won 13 Major Oklahoma, and Virginia, Next to Die tracks generous backers, and a mission. Awards Including each case and brings attention, and thus Politicians have to have well-formed accountability, to upcoming executions. Next Pulitzer Prize for What’s the thing you’re proudest of so far? ideas on our economy, schools, foreign to Die has been embedded on 100 websites Explanatory Reporting The Pulitzer was a great boost, and the policy, how to fight crime even — but and won one million pageviews. interview with Obama was a proud not, until recently, criminal justice. Why George Polk Award for moment for a young startup, but my do you think it took so long for criminal Justice Reporting The Record organizes criminal justice news favorite things about this job are, first, justice to get the attention it deserves? so a reader can search by any name or topic. watching our passionate and relentless While crime rates were high, in the World’s Best Designed As our reporters come across great articles, we team of journalists and, second, the way 1980’s and 1990’s, politicians were afraid News Site from the tag them with popular search terms like “mass we have used partnerships to amplify our to touch the issue. But now we have a Society for News Design incarceration,” “exoneration,” or “Sandra voice. whole generation that has grown up with Bland,” sending them into an automated feed declining crime, and it’s become a little on our website. This is particularly useful In a system as rife with problems as criminal less risky to point out that the system in connecting different aspects of criminal justice, what’s the role media can play? costs billions of dollars, alienates whole justice. Readers can type in Trayvon Martin’s The media has too often been part of the communities, and doesn’t make us safer. name, for example, and get an up-to-date problem, ratcheting up fear, covering news feed, curated by The Marshall Project’s crime but paying too little attention to the Where do you get your story ideas? experts, about his life, death, and how it systems that are supposed to deal with it.