Four people on a New York street

Work by Grant Recipients of the Initiative in Reporting on Race and Criminal Justice

2024 Grant Recipients

Invisible Institute, a local Chicago outlet, published an investigation into repeated, unpunished sexual assaults by police officers. The story is part of an ongoing series on police corruption, supported by the Lipman Center Initiative in Reporting on Race and Criminal Justice.

Jerry Mitchell of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and Mississippi Today, in partnership with The New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship, published the first story in a series on the alleged misuse of resources and abuse of power by a Rankin County, Mississippi, sheriff.

Ryan Kost and Willow Higgins, in partnership with NY Focus, investigated New York State conviction integrity units in District Attorneys’ offices.

2023 Grant Recipients

Lauren Gill and Daniel Moritz-Rabson published a series on execution practices.

Emily Zentner and Lisa Pickoff-White published their investigation for the California Newsroom into police prone restraint deaths. The story appeared in the Guardian and a number of California public radio stations.

AL.com published around 20 stories and a short film in a continuing series on Alabama's broken parole system. The news organization reported a huge effect, breaking the attorney general's hold over the parole board and setting up bipartisan alliances in the Alabama State Legislature. Because of AL.com’s work, paroles have tripled since the beginning of the publication year.

For The Emancipator, Tasmiha Khan investigated how discrimination and mistreatment in prisons curtails Muslim women's ability to live faithfully — or safely.

Mother Jones conducted a criminal justice investigation into the death of a young boy in the Crow Reservation.

2022 Grant Recipients

Reporters from the New York Amsterdam News explored how bail reform in New York City is changing criminal justice.

Reporters from The Associated Press not only examined the rash of state police reform laws that followed the death of George Floyd but investigated how more than 1,000 people died after police used restraint that wasn't meant to harm them.

The Current of Coastal Georgia documented police misconduct in Brunswick, Georgia: 

Business Insider built a database and examined violations of the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment in a seven-part series: 

Among the break-out stories:

Business Insider reported that Florida prisons are locking inmates in dirty shower stalls where they are forced to eat, defecate and sleep. The investigation was published locally in the Tampa Bay Times:

While gathering a database for the prison shower story and other stories in the series, Business Insider came across a questionable bankruptcy case involving one of the largest prison healthcare providers. Corizon is facing a slew of civil rights and medical malpractice lawsuits from prisoners and their families. This reporting won a Silver Barlett & Steele Award in the Global/National category.

Independent journalist Lauren Gill investigated indigent defense laws in Iowa:

Vice News produced a series of stories regarding police and government surveillance that includes a database of nearly half a million cases of wrongdoing by the NYPD: 

The Riverfront Times in St. Louis, Missouri, produced a series that examined deaths in local prisons and investigated how drugs get into prisons:

2021 Grant Recipients

A January 2022 project from AL.com won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Led by John Archibald, 2018 Pulitzer winner for Commentary, and Ashley Remkus, who was part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, this series exposed the criminalization of people for profit in a small Alabama town.

Margie Mason and Robin McDowell's series for AP examines the prison labor business. The first story was done as a podcast with Reveal. The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters were able to get US Steel to acknowledge its interests in a forced labor camp in Alabama; the reporters also located a cemetery that contained the bodies of former prisoners that US Steel had long denied owning. Margie Mason was interviewed about the story by Yamiche Alcindor on Washington Week Recommends.

In subsequent reporting, AP uncovered the connection between prisoners in the US and a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands. This reporting won a Gold Barlett & Steele Award in the Global/National category.

Mother Jones reporter Samantha Michaels looked at Oklahoma's failure-to-protect laws that penalize and imprison mothers with harsher sentences than those given to the men who brutalized their children.

Futuro Media wrote about Tennessee's treatment of juvenile lifers

Houston journalist Brittney Martin produced "Sugar Land," an eight-part investigative podcast series for The Texas Newsroom — a collaboration between NPR and public radio stations across the state — that laid bare the racist roots of Texas' criminal justice system. The series reveals the trials and circumstances of 95 Black and Brown convict laborers who died in Sugar Land, Texas, under the state's convict lease system and whose bodies were unearthed more than 100 years later.