Each year, investigative news reporters find new ways to shed light on the complicated problems of the criminal justice system. These are some of the in-depth stories and analyses that impressed us most in 2017:<\/p>\n
A timely Chicago Reporter<\/i> investigation this year raised the question: How many people are disenfranchised by the criminal justice system, not because of a felony record, but because they are in jail awaiting trial? Of the 700,000 people in jail in 2015, 63 percent were still eligible to vote, and poor Black and Latino defendants were overrepresented among them. The Chicago Reporter<\/i> story reveals that local sheriffs and election officials hold the keys to empowering eligible voters in jail to vote, and how inconsistent their efforts are to facilitate registration and voting. Adding a new dimension to the problem of disenfranchisement by the criminal justice system, this piece calls attention to America\u2019s jail problem at a time when it is urgently needed.<\/li>\n The American foster care system is famously troubled, but a New York Times<\/i> investigation this year revealed that New York City\u2019s Administration for Children\u2019s Services often punishes poor parents by taking their children away in \u201cemergency removals\u201d aided by the police. According to public defenders, poor Black and Hispanic mothers are most affected \u2013 held to unreasonably high standards in court, closely watched by caseworkers, and sometimes even arrested. The practice is so widespread that landlords have weaponized it, threatening to call Children\u2019s Services on lower-paying tenants. This is an alarming example of the criminalization of poverty via implicit biases at government agencies.<\/li>\n Reuters<\/i> left no stone unturned in its six-part series on Taser stun guns this year. In this first piece alone, the investigative team examined over 1,000 deaths that followed police use of Tasers, finding that a quarter of those who died were suffering from a mental health crisis or neurological disorder at the time. In more than 100 cases, police had initially been called to respond to a medical emergency. At a time when police use of force is headline news, Reuters<\/i> shows that even “safer” alternatives to firearms can be excessive, and even deadly. (See Part 6<\/a> for a similar analysis of the use of Tasers on incarcerated people.) <\/li>\n To date, the U.S. Supreme Court has approved draconian restrictions on people accused of sex offenses because the odds of committing another offense are “frightening and high” and “as high as 80%”. On what did the court base that finding? Legal scholars Ira and Tara Ellman followed the footnotes to find that it’s based on basically nothing at all. <\/p>\n David Feige mentions this story very briefly in his 2016 Untouchable<\/a> documentary, and goes deeper in this September New York Times<\/i> op-ed and 8-minute documentary<\/a> to meet the people behind those early articles. <\/p>\n At the risk of ruining the documentary’s narrative arc, the “frightening and high” language comes from an article not in a science magazine, but in a popular magazine. At the time (in 1986) there wasn’t much research on sex offense recidivism, and the studies ranged from rates of 35% to 80%. So what does the author of that original article think about using his article to say that all people convicted of sex offenses recidivate at 80%? He says “That’s absolutely incorrect. It’s wrong. It’s not true.” And the idea that laws were based on his writing in a non-scientific magazine? He’s appalled. The documentary raises the question: now that modern research says that the recividism rate is in the range of 1% to 3%, why do the courts insist on citing the more dramatic, if completely wrong, figure? <\/li>\n The New York Times and ProPublica collaborated on this investigation of the role insurers play in the ongoing opioid crisis. In their analysis of Medicare prescription plans and interviews with patients and professionals, they found that insurers often restrict access to safer, more expensive treatments, and leave patients with chronic pain few options but to take cheaper, more addictive drugs. Insurers often made it easier to get addictive substances than to get non-drug treatments and even treatment for addiction. While this article doesn’t touch upon the criminal justice implications, there are more than 1 million arrests<\/a> for drug possession each year and two-thirds<\/a> of people in jail have a history of a substance use disorder – even though it’s clear that the deck is stacked against people who need safe treatment, not punishment.<\/li>\n Silver and Wright, a private law firm contracted as city prosecutor for two southern California towns, has been using its power to take residents to court for minor crimes and then hand them sky-high bills for their own prosecution. A Desert Sun<\/i> investigation found that the cities billed 18 defendants more than $120,000 in prosecution fees \u2013 defendants mostly charged with public nuisance crimes, like overgrown weeds \u2013 and threatened to take away their homes if they did not pay. Brett Kelman details one of the most egregious recent examples of the privatization of justice functions leading to the exploitation of defendants.<\/li>\n President Trump\u2019s Justice Department, which has treated excessive force by police as a non-issue, announced in September that it would scale back a program that offered guidance to troubled police departments. The Justice Department calls its new approach \u201chands off,\u201d but a New York Times<\/i> deep dive found that many police chiefs are pushing back, saying the program was collaborative and useful. Resistance from police chiefs of all stripes points to a \u201cgrowing consensus\u201d that building bridges with underserved communities should be a public safety priority.<\/li>\n The Dallas Morning News<\/i> combed through monthly data from sheriffs’ offices to discover an alarming trend: The number of unconvicted women in Texas jails has climbed by 48 percent since 2011. Cary Aspinwall profiles jailed women who are part of this upward trend, and explains that what\u2019s driving women\u2019s jail growth in Texas is that women \u201ckeep going back, trapped in a cycle of debt and poverty and drug addiction.\u201d The piece represents growing awareness of the problem of women\u2019s mass incarceration in local correctional facilities. (To learn about women\u2019s incarceration in your state, stay tuned for our next report, The Gender Divide, due out in January 2018.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Investigative reporters are illuminating little-known facets of the criminal justice system. We share our favorite work from 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[46,36],"class_list":["post-6826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6826"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10339,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826\/revisions\/10339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6826"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nStephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
\nThe New York Times<\/i>
\nJuly 21, 2017 <\/p>\n
\nPeter Eisler, Jason Szep, Tim Reid and Grant Smith
\nReuters<\/i>
\nAugust 22, 2017 <\/p>\n
\nDavid Feige
\nNew York Times<\/i>
\nSeptember 12, 2017 <\/p>\n
\nKatie Thomas and Charles Ornstein
\nThe New York Times<\/i>
\nSeptember 17, 2017 <\/p>\n
\nBrett Kelman
\nThe Desert Sun<\/i>
\nNovember 15, 2017 <\/p>\n
\nSteve Eder, Ben Protess and Shaila Dewan
\nThe New York Times<\/i>
\nNovember 21, 2017 <\/p>\n
\nCary Aspinwall
\nThe Dallas Morning News<\/i>
\nDecember 3, 2017 <\/p>\n
![1 million arrests<\/a> for drug possession each year and](\"https:\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/pie2017_drug_arrests.png\"){kind=link}