The Jump Line: the Demise of Open Records, Prosecuting Protesters, and more
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We’re realizing we could start every edition of this newsletter with some variation of “Phew, the last few weeks have been a lot,” and lo, the last two weeks have been a lot. The news cycle has been dominated by campus protests and the ensuing responses by college administrators and police. At The Appeal, Jerry Iannelli, Ethan Corey, Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg and Meg O’Connor asked prosecutors around the country whether they intend to charge the thousands of students arrested on college campuses. You can go through the list of responses they received from elected prosecutors here. The responses are predictably disappointing – out of the 117 prosecutors who were contacted, only 4 seemed apprehensive about prosecuting protestors.
Also, a quick Pulitzer note — there are many worthy finalists and winners, but we want to highlight Sarah Stillman and Keri Blakinger’s work! Keri’s piece on playing Dungeons and Dragons on death row is here, and Sarah’s piece on felony murder is here. Highly, highly recommend reading them both.
And here are just a few more things worth reading this week, before we get into the rest:
We noticed two very cool collaborations between ProPublica and local outlets.
First up, Mark Olalde with ProPublica and Nick Bowlin with Capital & Main reported on the health effects–and accompanying financial costs–of “orphan wells” in Oklahoma. Because of lax regulations, farmers and other homeowners are often left with the burden of plugging old oil wells on their properties. Left unplugged, these wells poison the air and the groundwater around them. The total estimated cost of plugging and cleaning all the abandoned wells in Oklahoma is more than $7 billion, far more than oil companies have set aside for the task.
Lee Zurik, Samantha Sunne and Dannah Sauer at WVUE-TV and Joel Jacobs at ProPublica reported on a small town in Louisiana that is disproportionately funded by traffic fees – specifically the contempt fees levied at those who missed court or couldn’t pay their original fines. In reading/watching this, you’ll learn a bit more about Mayor’s Courts, which only operate in Louisiana and Ohio. They resemble municipal courts, except that the judges (either literally the mayors of the town or some other appointed official) are not obligated to be lawyers, and they are not courts of record, meaning…nothing that happens inside of them gets recorded. More on this – and magistrate courts – in a future Jump Line!
Remember when we wrote about police foundations? Now there’s a new resource out from researchers at the University of Chicago tracking the private money flowing into police departments across the country. Katya Schwenk at The Lever breaks the paper’s findings down here.
The Future of Open Records Laws
Why We’re Thinking About It
It’s, uh, extremely alarming to see states brazenly gut open records laws. Over the last few months, states around the country have considered legislation that would limit the types of information the public can access through open records laws. In Louisiana, James Finn and Meghan Friedmann at The Times Picayune are covering legislation that would, among other things, prohibit access to records “comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated” and establish identification requirements for people seeking to access public records. It’s not just Louisiana chipping away at public records laws. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation restricting her (and future Governors’) travel and security records. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ attorney argued in court that executive privilege should keep the Governor’s records private. New Jersey officials are considering sweeping changes to their public records law. Colorado legislators recently exempted themselves from some parts of the state’s open meetings law. And in Nebraska, the state Supreme Court upheld a $44,000 charge to the Flatwater Free Press for documents relating to groundwater contamination.
Angles to consider
Follow the litigation
Josh Kelety with the Associated Press and Eric Scicchitano and Carson Gerber with CNHI News collected information about the processes for resolving open records disputes in all 50 states. They found that litigation is often the only way people can appeal when their open records requests are denied, an option that is too complicated and expensive for many people to undertake.
Tracking the lawsuits that are filed is one way of keeping tabs on what’s happening with open records in your area.
In Georgia, Appen Media is suing the Sandy Springs Police Department for withholding incident reports that Appen maintains should have been public.
A Louisiana man grieving the death of his son was quoted $18,000 by the Jefferson Parish District Attorney for records surrounding his son’s death. He sued.
In North Carolina, a nonprofit is suing the Durham County Sheriff’s Office for violating open records law in their attempt to keep records about their use of restraint chairs from the public.
The impact on incarcerated people and their families
Jails and prisons across the country have limited the type and amount of information they are willing to share about even the most basic things, like people who die in their care. In Georgia, Alabama, and New York City (among many other places) it’s become more difficult to find out when–and why—people die behind bars.
There are a number of projects that have sprung up to fill these gaps in data.
A program at the UCLA School of Law manages a database monitoring deaths in US prisons, which follows their excellent work cataloging COVID deaths behind bars.
Professor Andrea Armstrong’s Incarceration Transparency has tracked deaths behind bars in Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina.
Joshua Vaughn and Brittany Hailer at the Pittsburgh Institute of Nonprofit Journalism investigated deaths in Pennsylvania jails, finding dozens of deaths that the state had not reported. They also made a “how we did this” that could be useful for other journalists.
Ben Conarck at the Baltimore Banner investigated a Maryland jail with a higher-than-average rate of deaths by suicide.
Also, wherever you live, there are almost certainly organizers – who probably have an incarcerated loved one – working to count/log deaths and injuries through reports from people inside. In multiple states, there are Facebook groups dedicated to this, more often for prisons but sometimes for jails, and they are often excellent sources. Just be mindful that some groups are just for families/loved ones!
Co-reporting with an incarcerated journalist
Incarcerated journalist Kory McClary worked with Josh McGee at MindSite News and the Guardian on this beautiful, in-depth piece on the life and death of a man incarcerated with McClary in New Jersey. As prison and jail systems become more opaque and less responsive to records requests, the importance of reporting by incarcerated journalists grows. In order to best scaffold a story and keep the incarcerated writer safe, co-reporting – partnerships between outside and inside journalists – is a good model.
The Center for Just Journalism has a how-to guide on this kind of reporting, featuring a co-written piece in The Guardian.
The Prison Journalism Project (PJP) has a lot of helpful resources, from how-to’s on filing records requests in prisons to laws around prison journalism across the country to their own excellent reporting.
Empowerment Ave is another great resource. It's a nonprofit that helps support inside journalism, connects writers for co-reported pieces, and more.
Other things:
The Center for Just Journalism is hiring a Director of Newsroom partnerships. This person will lead the Center’s engagement and relationship building with journalists, create resources for reporters and editors covering safety issues, and develop partnerships with media organizations. Ideally the person will have 5 plus years of journalism experience, with deep understanding of the standards, practices, challenges, and incentives of newsrooms. You can email Hannah (hannah@justjournalism.org) with any questions.
There’s a new report out from the Prison Policy Initiative, yet again highlighting how the system shifts the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their loved ones. “Inmate welfare funds” (spoiler: that’s a bit of a misnomer) exist in prisons and jails in most states; the money in those funds is skimmed off the top of what family and loved ones of incarcerated people pay for phone calls, as well as the profit from items purchased in the commissary. Shadow Budgets finds that the vast majority of state prison systems (and the BOP) are using these funds to pay for, among other things, capital projects (building new prisons) or the basic essentials for incarcerated people – things that the prisons or jails themselves should already be paying for. Check to see if your local jail is included in the anecdote section about how these funds have been used: our local lockup, the Fulton County Jail, used incarcerated people’s money from the welfare fund to purchase $40,000 worth of gift cards to the Honey Baked Ham Company for staff.
That’s all for now! In upcoming issues we’re going to talk about the media-supported myth of first-responder-fentanyl-overdoses, the increasing police use of sedatives like ketamine in the course of making an arrest, and roadside drug testing. Again, we’re always hoping for tips, so please get in touch if you have any interesting tidbits to share about the nexus of policing/drugs/junk science. And about anything else!