Some of Our Best Work of 2023

The Marshall Mission is a nonprofit newsroom overlaying the U.S. legal justice system. Join our newsletters to obtain all of our tales and evaluation.

As the talk on reproductive rights swirled in 2023, and U.S. jail situations continued to be criticized, The Marshall Mission used newfound knowledge and in-depth story-telling to light up these and different very important legal justice points.

We examined the spate of prosecutions of pregnant ladies in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina and printed first-person accounts of the problem of being pregnant in jail. Our reporters combed by way of New York jail disciplinary information, discovering that misbehavior by guards is ceaselessly coated up, permitting many officers to keep away from punishment for abusing prisoners.

We introduced our investigative work to new audiences, together with incarcerated individuals, by way of podcasts and broadcast partnerships. We examined the murky world of parole and questioned strategies utilized by Texas Rangers by way of two widely-heard podcasts, and launched a video collection geared toward incarcerated audiences. We continued our dedication to narrative storytelling, describing how demise row prisoners discover connection by way of taking part in “Dungeons & Dragons,” and tracing the little-known “mitigation specialists” who try to avoid wasting individuals from the demise penalty.

As an indication of our continued dedication to enriching reporting on legal justice, we introduced the launch of The Marshall Mission’s second native information operation. Reporters Caleb Bedillion and Daja Henry are based mostly in Jackson, Mississippi, and might be guided by Senior Editor Paul D’Ambrosio and Marlon Walker, managing editor, native. As with our Cleveland, Ohio, group, they are going to delve into untold legal justice tales of their group and collaborate with native information organizations to show inequities in Mississippi’s authorized system.

The Marshall Mission, as at all times, stays dedicated to ground-breaking and honest investigative reporting, revealing the failings of the U.S. legal justice system and drawing consideration to potential reforms. As we glance again at our work in 2023, we’re actually grateful for readers such as you. Your assist is important to our journalism.

Jail self-discipline

When New York repealed a regulation that stored secret the disciplinary information of jail guards in 2020, we have been the primary newsroom to efficiently use the regulation to get the information. Reporters Alysia Santo and Joseph Neff and Senior Editor Tom Meagher combed by way of hundreds of pages of courtroom paperwork, arbitration and officer disciplinary information. Our two-year investigation, co-published by The New York Occasions, discovered it’s routine for New York corrections officers to cowl up the mistreatment of prisoners, making it tough to carry anybody accountable.

In a subsequent investigation, Santo and Neff revealed that many guards dismissed for abusive conduct acquired their jobs again. Between 2010 and 2022, outdoors arbitrators reinstated three of each 4 guards fired for abuse or for overlaying it up, in accordance with our overview of 136 circumstances. The choices closely favored jail guards, even when there was sturdy proof in opposition to them.

Being pregnant and prosecution

Reporter Cary Aspinwall, together with reporters from AL.com, Mississippi At this time, The Frontier and the Submit and Courier, investigated the usage of baby safety legal guidelines throughout the South to prosecute pregnant ladies accused of utilizing medication. In most states, a pregnant girl suspected of utilizing medication might be referred to a toddler welfare company. However in some counties in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina, these circumstances are being prosecuted — even when the newborn is born wholesome.

Along with that reporting, we printed a Life Inside collection of first-person essays, as advised to Engagement Editor Nicole Lewis, on what it’s wish to be pregnant or a brand new guardian and be incarcerated or working in a jail. Victoria Lopez was a type of mothers. A brand new regulation in Minnesota allowed Lopez to start her sentence at house for a yr to be along with her new child twins, however then she needed to depart them to complete the seven-year time period, and he or she anxious about how that may damage them.

Inside Story with VICE

As a part of our mission to ship information inside prisons, we collaborated with VICE Information on a first-of-its-kind video collection this yr. The eight episodes of Inside Story, co-created by The Marshall Mission’s Lawrence Bartley and Donald Washington Jr., introduced accountability and investigative journalism on the legal justice system to individuals behind bars. The TV magazine-style collection profiled previously incarcerated people who find themselves now productive residents on the skin, and included animations that offered perspective on how individuals’s lives are altered by the legal justice system. The Inside Story collection had greater than 1,000,000 mixed views on YouTube and was distributed to roughly 750 prisons and jails through tablets accessible to incarcerated individuals and services’ closed-circuit tv.

Thomson jail

Reporting over the previous two years by The Marshall Mission’s Christie Thompson and NPR reporter Joe Shapiro revealed harmful situations and a number of other deaths within the high-security unit at Thomson federal jail in Illinois. 9 months after our first story, with stress from members of Congress, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons closed the unit. However that wasn’t the tip of the story. Thompson and Shapiro reported in November that 14 individuals incarcerated within the unit had despatched a letter to the then-warden, who was attempting to implement reforms, to warn him that corrections officers have been urging them to hurt him.

Podcasting

For the primary time, The Marshall Mission created and helped produce two podcast collection in 2023: “Violation,” an in-depth take a look at the homicide conviction of Jacob Wideman in Arizona, and “Simply Say You’re Sorry,” an examination of the controversial investigative methods of a former Texas ranger recognized for fixing chilly circumstances. Collectively, they’ve totaled round 1.9 million downloads. “Violation” included interviews by reporter Beth Schwartzapfel with each Wideman and his father, John Edgar Wideman, an acclaimed novelist and essayist, and others near the case. It was created with WBUR in Boston. “Simply Say You’re Sorry,” based mostly on reporting by Maurice Chammah, was made in partnership with Sony Music Leisure and Somethin’ Else.

Dungeons & Dragons on demise row

Males imprisoned on Texas’ demise row dwell in isolation, confined alone in small cells and barely in a position to converse with different prisoners. They’re allowed just one five-minute telephone name each 90 days. However over greater than three years of reporting, often by letter or temporary in-person visits, reporter Keri Blakinger found that these males had discovered a approach to break up the loneliness of solitary confinement by taking part in clandestine video games of Dungeons & Dragons. They relied on a wide range of covert communications, together with written messages handed from cell to cell. “Typically, by way of their characters, they opened up about issues they might by no means in any other case focus on — abusive dad and mom, fractured childhoods, drug addictions — unpacking their private traumas by way of a skinny veil of fantasy,” Blakinger wrote in “When Wizards and Orcs Got here to Demise Row,” which was co-published by The New York Occasions Journal.

Mercy Employees

Reporter Maurice Chammah spent greater than three years reporting “The Mercy Employees,” a uncommon take a look at the career of “mitigation specialists,” who unearth the trauma that usually underpins capital crimes. Sara Baldwin, a frontrunner within the discipline, agreed to let Chammah shadow her. They selected the case of James Bernard Belcher, who was dealing with a demise sentence for raping and murdering Jennifer Embry in Jacksonville, Florida. Chammah frolicked with Baldwin and Belcher as an extended historical past of trauma in his childhood was uncovered. He then took readers alongside to Belcher’s resentencing listening to, sitting with Belcher’s mom as she realized whether or not her son would dwell or die. To achieve a broader viewers, artist Jackie Roche then turned it right into a superbly illustrated comic-style story.

Books banned in prisons

Prior to now yr, we’ve gathered info, state-by-state, on jail ebook insurance policies and lists of publications banned in prisons. Led by Andrew Rodriguez Calderón and Ryan Murphy, our group has constructed a searchable database so readers can see for themselves which books prisons are banning. We’ve additionally put collectively a how-to for different journalists to report on banned books and highlighted our key findings. Our Cleveland reporting group additionally used the information to give attention to which books are banned in Ohio and why.

Calderón and reporter Shannon Heffernan additionally appeared on the current crackdown in Iowa, Missouri and Texas limiting who can ship books to prisons due to issues over paper laced with narcotics. A senior supervisor at PEN America advised the reporters that permitting books solely from sure distributors quantities to censorship.

Gun arrests in Chicago

Arrests in Chicago for illegally possessing firearms have elevated lately to ranges not seen for the reason that Nineties — even because the police division’s complete variety of arrests is falling. Reporters Lakeidra Chavis and Geoff Hing delved into the information to measure the toll of Chicago’s gun insurance policies. They discovered that tens of hundreds of individuals — nearly at all times Black males — have been convicted of felonies, for what’s primarily a licensing difficulty. The reporters additionally discovered that the assumption that making gun possession unlawful with out permits makes individuals safer isn’t supported by knowledge. Analysis exhibits that most individuals convicted in Illinois for felony gun possession don’t go on to commit a violent crime, and the vast majority of these sentenced to jail for gun possession don’t have previous convictions for violence.

Reaching incarcerated readers

Our print publication, “Information Inside,” goes into 1,359 prisons throughout the US, taking our legal justice protection to incarcerated audiences. This yr, these points included tales in regards to the lack of attorneys for individuals in pretrial detention in Mississippi, employment obstacles for previously incarcerated individuals and the push to enhance meals in Texas prisons. The ultimate difficulty of the yr additionally included an Ohio-specific insert created by our Cleveland outreach supervisor, Louis Fields, that included our reporting on bail reform and sentence reductions. Each difficulty consists of “The Peeps” comedian, “Reader to Reader” recommendation column, a crossword and “Considering Contained in the Field” quiz.

Taking readers inside prisons

Our Life Inside essays provide individuals a window into life inside prisons and jails. This yr, these first-person options included Michael Shane Hale’s essay on making a welcoming and secure house within the jail library, Bobby Bostic’s piece on his post-prison writing workshops at juvenile detention services in St. Louis, and Earline Brooks Colbert’s story about her brother after which her son being wrongly convicted for homicide in Louisiana.

We additionally gave readers a collection of gorgeous animations that includes tales of individuals affected by the justice system. Ymilul Bates did a voice-over for animated illustrations exhibiting a jail ready room for a chunk about visiting her younger son in jail for the primary time. As photos observe his story, Bostic describes his mom’s backyard in St. Louis and compares it with the therapeutic he discovered when he signed up for backyard responsibility whereas he was in jail in Missouri.

“Two Strikes” airs on FRONTLINE

Working with FRONTLINE’s Firelight Fellowship program, reporter Cary Aspinwall and filmmaker Ursula Liang turned Aspinwall’s story about life with out parole sentences in Florida into a brief documentary that aired on the TV information program. “Two Strikes” tells the story of Mark Jones, a 37-year-old former West Level cadet affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction and alcoholism, who was sentenced to life in jail in Florida after an unsuccessful carjacking. Jones had earlier arrests for minor crimes, however Florida’s “two-strikes” regulation permits the utmost punishment for individuals who commit a felony inside three years of leaving jail, even for a failed carjacking try wherein nobody was bodily injured.

Our 2019 movie “Tutwiler” aired on the identical FRONTLINE broadcast. For Tutwiler, reporter Alysia Santo and filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon adopted the pregnancies of girls incarcerated in Alabama as they labored with doulas to assist them put together for supply.

Utilizing knowledge to inform tales

Knowledge reporter Weihua Li has spent the previous two years delving into gaps in FBI crime knowledge attributable to some main cities’ slowness in adopting the company’s new reporting system. Nearly each police company was utilizing the outdated system in 2020, however when the brand new system went into impact in 2021, hundreds of businesses dropped out. So, individuals in these communities — and their political leaders — don’t totally know the state of crime. As an example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned this yr that crime in his state was at a “50-year low.” However reporting by Li and Jasmyne Ricard confirmed he was counting on incomplete knowledge.

Li and Jamiles Lartey additionally discovered that the FBI’s crime reporting program and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ crime victimization survey differed broadly on year-over-year violent crime tendencies.

And our up to date take a look at mass capturing knowledge by David Eads, Anna Flagg, Anastasia Valeeva and Wendy Ruderman discovered that these crimes in 2023 continued the upward pattern of current years, even utilizing probably the most conservative definition.

Migrants trapped in asylum system

In “Migrants Determined for Jobs Trapped in Asylum Maze,” Julia Preston wrote in August in regards to the plight of virtually 60,000 migrants caught in shelters in New York Metropolis whereas they waited for work permits and their asylum circumstances to be heard. Throughout her reporting, the White Home lastly moved to hurry up the method, permitting lots of them to file for work authorization. With out these permits, many households have been compelled into the underground financial system.

Juan Carlos Bello, a political organizer who fled Venezuela for security, had created a enterprise putting in cupboards in his house nation. He mentioned he was decided to remain on the authorized path. “We now have to hold on and hold transferring ahead,” he mentioned.

Telling Cleveland’s tales

Reporting from Cleveland, Mark Puente teamed up with WEWS Information 5 reporter Tara Morgan to look at the excessive variety of driver licenses suspended in Ohio for fines or different causes not associated to driving. Our investigation discovered that the Ohio Bureau of Motor Autos issued almost 200,000 new license suspensions in 2022 for debt-related causes, akin to not having proof of insurance coverage, failing to pay courtroom fines, or lacking baby assist funds. 1000’s of residents have needed to go on cost plans and meet different necessities earlier than they’ll apply for reinstatement, making it tough for them to get to work.

In one other investigation, Puente appeared into the questionable relationship between Decide Leslie Ann Celebrezze and a court-appointed receiver who earned a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} for work in her courtroom. The Ohio Supreme Court docket just lately dominated that Celebrezze violated courtroom guidelines when she steered a contentious however profitable divorce case to her personal docket and appointed the receiver, a lifelong pal.

Rachel Dissell and Ilica Mahajan continued our in-depth take a look at the bail system in Cuyahoga County, discovering that the usage of money bail is on the decline whereas private bonds that don’t require cost for launch are getting used extra typically. However the practices various by choose, with some hardly ever setting money bail and others requiring it routinely.

Police ways in Memphis

When Tyre Nichols died after being crushed by Memphis police in January, consideration turned to the division’s Scorpion Unit, whose officers had stopped him. However Marshall Mission reporters Daphne Duret and Weihua Li, together with Marc Perrusquia of the Institute for Public Service Reporting, dug deeper into the division’s document of violence. Our investigation discovered incidents of aggressive policing all through the 1,900-member pressure. A overview of greater than 200 current arrest studies confirmed that rank-and-file officers, in addition to Scorpion members, used overzealous strategies.

In a subsequent story, Duret and Perrusquia revealed that federal judges and magistrates in Memphis had rejected proof in a minimum of 10 circumstances involving the town’s police division over the previous 5 years. In a number of circumstances, they chastised officers for overzealous policing.

Corcoran Jail in hurt’s method

Susie Cagle started investigating the results of rising water on Corcoran Jail because the water first reached Tulare Lake in March. Over months of reporting, she spoke with 12 prisoners and 25 members of the family, officers and specialists. She additionally reviewed a whole bunch of paperwork to piece collectively The Marshall Mission’s first long-form comedian, “In Hurt’s Method.” Cagle advised the story of Corcoran in additional than 70 panels, offering a deep exploration of California’s resolution to position two prisons in a dry lakebed regardless of warnings of future flooding and tapping into knowledge to elucidate the area’s sinking floor. She additionally offered vivid scenes of life behind bars, supported by prisoner interviews.

Psychological well being and legal justice

Christie Thompson studies on the intersection of psychological well being and the legal justice system, probing what occurs to individuals who have dementia or psychological sickness when they’re charged with a criminal offense or have encounters with police.

In “The By no means-Ending Homicide Case,” she advised the story of Jose Veguilla, an 83-year-old Massachusetts man with dementia who was charged with homicide within the demise of his nursing house roommate. Veguilla was despatched to a state hospital to be evaluated and held till being “restored” to competency. However dementia isn’t a psychological sickness that may be handled with medicines. He was transferred to a extra therapeutic hospital, however is basically in limbo. Thompson discovered that Veguilla and different individuals with dementia who’re charged with crimes are being drawn right into a system that isn’t arrange for them.

Reporting on Mississippi

In 2020, Joseph Neff and Alysia Santo investigated funds to Administration and Coaching Company. They discovered that the personal jail firm had collected tens of millions of {dollars} by charging the corrections division for vacant safety positions. State Auditor Shad White opened an investigation after our story was printed and introduced in September that MTC had repaid the state greater than $5 million for so-called ghost employees.

Caleb Bedillion, one in every of our new reporters based mostly in Jackson, partnered with ProPublica this yr to look at Mississippi’s underfunded, patchwork public protection system. They discovered that poor defendants in Mississippi routinely have been being jailed for months, and even years, and not using a lawyer being assigned to them. The state Supreme Court docket directed judges to make sure poor defendants get attorneys promptly, however months after it went into impact in July, the order wasn’t being broadly adopted.

Closing Argument

Each week, a flood of tales in regards to the legal authorized system vie for readers’ consideration. The Marshall Mission’s “Closing Argument” tackles one in every of these subjects each week, including context, skilled evaluation and hyperlinks to the perfect journalism across the nation to elucidate the difficulty.

The e-newsletter is reported and written by Jamiles Lartey, constructed on the efforts of our complete employees, who catalog dozens of legal justice-related information tales every day. The aim of “Closing Argument” is to whittle down this countless stream of knowledge so the common reader can simply digest and use it.

When Tyre Nichols died in January after 5 Memphis law enforcement officials beat him throughout a visitors cease, Lartey and Wilbert Cooper examined how a lot the race of officers impacts how they method their jobs. All 5 officers have been Black, as was Nichols. Cooper, who comes from a household of Black officers, has carried out intensive analysis on this topic and supplied a private perspective.

Rising newsletters and viewers

With the addition of an area reporting group in Jackson, we’re including one other e-newsletter in January. It can give attention to our information protection in Mississippi, because the e-newsletter from our group in Cleveland, Ohio, does. As we put together to launch our protection in Mississippi, we need to hear from readers there in regards to the legal justice points that concern them. Right here’s fill out that survey.

We even have a every day e-newsletter, “Opening Assertion,” written by Andrew Cohen, that may be a complete take a look at the legal justice panorama.

Publication supervisor Rachel Kincaid manages greater than a half dozen common newsletters and provides readers and donors behind-the-scenes seems to be at our investigatory tasks. Right here’s how one can subscribe to any of them.

Additionally this yr, viewers director Ashley Dye added two viewers engagement producers to their employees: Kristin Bausch and Chris Vazquez. They’ve dramatically elevated our presence on TikTok and enriched our choices on Instagram.