11-02-28 Criminal Justice Journalists: Covering Crime and Justice

Covering
Crime
and
Justice
http://www.justicejournalism.org/crimeguide/toc.html
Written and edited by

Criminal Justice Journalists
crimjj.wordpress.com
1 Covering Crime and Justice

Contents
Chapter 1 The Crime Beat ............................................................................................................................. 3
Chapter 2 Juvenile Justice ............................................................................................................................. 6
Chapter 3 Reporting on Drug Law Enforcement and Controlled Substances............................................... 8
Chapter 4 Racial and Ethnic Issues.............................................................................................................. 10
Chapter 5 Covering Crime and Its Victims .................................................................................................. 13
Chapter 6 Journalism Ethics ........................................................................................................................ 15
Chapter 7 Covering the Courts.................................................................................................................... 17
Chapter 8 Covering Criminal Courts............................................................................................................ 19
Chapter 9 Covering Civil Courts .................................................................................................................. 21
Chapter 10 How Prosecutors Work ............................................................................................................ 23
Chapter 11 Guns and Gun Control .............................................................................................................. 25
Chapter 12 Covering Domestic Violence .................................................................................................... 27
Chapter 13 Covering Prisons and Jails ........................................................................................................ 30
Chapter 14 Covering Sentencing................................................................................................................. 32
Chapter 15 Covering Community Corrections: Probation, Parole and Beyond.......................................... 34

Chapter 1
The Crime Beat
By Dave Krajicek
Introduction
If journalism is about telling stories, then the crime beat should be the best in the business because it
offers such great stories to tell. The dramatis personae for even routine crime tales likely will include a
protagonist and antagonist, if not outright heroes and scoundrels.
As Edna Buchanan, the legendary Miami Herald crime reporter, put it, the crime beat "has it all: greed,
sex, violence, comedy and tragedy."
The crime beat is a place where a journalist can "make his bones," as the mob adage goes. (My gender
reference is convenient but dated. Buchanan noted that a female cop reporter was rare when she started
in 1971. The gender split on the beat today seems roughly even.)
Buchanan and other top crime reporters share a number of traits, including exceptional initiative and
determination, an eye for accuracy and detail, a knack for sourcing, and the ability to tell a story.
Many editors and producers still use the crime beat as a sink-or-swim test. Those who display fortitude
and resilience under the beat's special pressures are deemed capable of "promotion" to other beats.
Those who don't pass the Johnny Deadline test are destined for features.
Unfortunately, too many news operations use sink-or-swim as an excuse for failing to provide training and
support when an inexperienced reporter is assigned to crime.
Consider the experience of Ilene Prusher, hired in the mid-1990s to cover crime in the suburbs for
thePhiladelphia Inquirer.
"I had no training whatsoever," said Prusher, now a foreign correspondent for the Christian Science
Monitor. "They just told me that I was the police reporter. The former police reporter was gone, so no one
could introduce me to the key sources or give advice. My boss gave me a list of phone numbers for the
police departments and told me to call them."
Although there is a solid cadre of career crime reporters across the country, the beat suffers from high
turnover. And while good crime reporters are highly valued in a newsroom, the cop beat still has a stigma.
When I started in the business, in the late 1970s, a seasoned colleague suggested I spend no more than
18 months on the crime beat lest I be tarred as a cop-shop lifer. Peter Hermann, a veteran police reporter
at the Baltimore Sun, recalled that a colleague once told him he was too good a journalist to waste his
talents on crime reporting. (Not long after he made the comment, Hermann was transferred directly from
the police beat to Middle East correspondent for the Sun.)
Most reporters have no criminal justice background when assigned to cover crime. Whether a reporter
plans a year or a lifetime on the beat, news organizations should help the journalist get off on the right
foot by allowing adequate time and resources for training.
This chapter of the CJJ Guide to Reporting offers information and tips about crime beat training, source
relationship, records and access, story ideas, enterprise and preparedness, as well as sidebars about
such things as the history of police reporting and important subjects like the Miranda warning, "perp
walks," crime waves and the FBI's National Crime Information Center.

About the Beat
"News is the inexact measure of the ebb and flow of the tides of human aspiration, the ignominy of
mankind, the glory of the human race. It is the best record we have of the incredible meanness and the
magnificent courage of man."
Stanley Walker, a respected editor of the New York Herald Tribune, may have had the crime beat in mind
when he wrote that elegant definition long ago.
Like few other news beats, crime requires a reporter to juggle many forms of news. At most newspapers
and radio and TV stations, the crime reporter will cover an array of stories – from traffic tie-ups and fires
to homicides and airplane crashes. The beat is synonymous with breaking news.
Most crime reporters also are expected to produce longer-range pieces – weekend features, analyses,
investigations. They do all this while covering the cop shop, from the blotter to internal affairs, the budget
to union politics.
Crime reporters often are the busiest journalists in any newsroom.
Newspapers in all but the largest cities dedicate a column or more per day to a small-type accounting of
transgressions and misfortunes – arrests for driving drunk or passing bad checks, reports to police of
break-ins and thefts, convictions for larcenies and welfare fraud. The task of daily compilation often falls
to the police reporter.
This is one reason that small-town police reporters can feel even more pressure than those working in big
cities do.
Small-town reporters face other special challenges, as well.
A crime reporter at a small news operation might deal with the same two or three sources every day. A
conflict with a single source can change a relationship with the entire agency. A single story about a
rogue cop might leave the reporter blackballed – even if the story is perfectly accurate.
In a sense, big-city reporters enjoy the cocoon of competition. When "bad news" breaks about a police
agency, a dozen journalists might cover the story. The risk for long-term damage to a reporter-source
relationship is mitigated because so many are covering the same story.
As a police reporter in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and New York City, I found that cops are cops and crime is
crime. New York had more of both, but my experiences in Iowa covering fire and police stories translated
to the big city.
Two differences: Crime reporting in New York was more competitive, and journalists there were more
aggressive.
Police-reporter relations were similar in both places – and in every other city with which I am familiar.
Cops are leery of journalists, and many journalists are cynical about cops. Perhaps this is healthy.
Peter Hermann, the former Baltimore Sun cop reporter, once made the salient suggestion that crime
reporters and police officers need not begin the day with a group hug. Each should simply resolve to give
the other a fair shake. Reporters should seek respectful cooperation, not admiration, from the police. And
if the police do their job well, we should respect them in return.

As with most beats, the best reporters are those who manage to develop the best sources. Some states
have journalist-friendly record laws that mitigate the need for human sourcing for certain types of
information. Nonetheless, successful crime reporters, like Edna Buchanan, stay on the beat long enough
and have adequate interpersonal skills to develop sources.
Today's crime reporters have the advantage of vast electronic resources, including improved access to
expert sourcing and direct access to information.
On the other hand, local sourcing can be challenging in this era of the public information officer. In many
agencies, rank-and-file officers and even supervisors are cautioned (or ordered) against speaking with
reporters, often under threat of career-impeding sanctions. (More on PIOs below.)
Yet crime reporters across the country continue to earn scoops through sourcing. How do they do it?
Through enterprise, creativity, competence and longevity.

Chapter 2
Juvenile Justice
By Jack Kresnak
Introduction
Every day, judges conduct secret hearings to decide the fate of thousands of children and their families.
Covering America's maddeningly secretive juvenile justice system presents not only a great challenge for
a journalist, but is a public service that helps kids and makes for fascinating reporting that readers relish.
This chapter will recount the history of juvenile justice in the United States, describe the complexities of
the system and offer ways to overcome the challenge of confidentiality, as well as ideas for stories that
will make a difference.
In the 19th century, children who committed crimes faced about the same punishments as adult criminals:
public shaming, incarceration, even execution by hanging. At least 10 juveniles who were under 14 at the
time of their offense were executed during the 1800s, including two who were just 10 years old, says the
Washington-based Coalition for Juvenile Justice. A criminal was a criminal, regardless of age, maturity or
deplorable family life.
Wayward kids were placed in poorhouses where they were worked hard, disciplined firmly and, if they
were lucky, allowed to learn a trade. Children accused of serious violent crimes were thrown into jails with
adults, where they risked all manner of abuse and exploitation, including rape.
Toward the end of the 19th century, reformers such as Jane Addams of Chicago's Hull House worked to
develop a new system of justice designed to protect abused children from harm and to reform trouble-
making youths. With the Juvenile Court Act of 1899, the state of Illinois created the nation's first court of
justice for children.
One motivating factor was the unease of some state officials over the growing numbers of jury
nullifications – acquittals of obviously guilty young offenders by jurors who knew what kids faced in adult
prisons. In the new juvenile court, children would no longer be seen as miniature adults and sentenced to
prison. Nor would they be considered property owned by parents; the state took upon itself the authority
to remove abused, neglected, or exploited children from their families.
On July 3, 1899, Cook County Court Judge Richard S. Tuthill held the nation's first juvenile court hearing.
The Chicago Tribune wrote that, "Henry Campbell, 11 years old, living with his parents at 84 Hudson
Avenue, was arrested last week on the complaint of his mother, Mrs. Lena Campbell, she charging him
with larceny." Tuthill "left the group of probationary officers with whom he had been in consultation and in
an informal way disposed of the case," the Tribune wrote.
Tuthill then turned to a petition for "four boys of tender years" being held at the county poorhouse at
Dunning, "which the petitioner declares is an unfit place for them." The Tribune identified all four – Johnny
Host, Thomas McNally, Antonio Polo and Leslie Coleman – children who had not committed any crime
but who were neglected by their parents and probably homeless. Their ages were not reported.
Chicago journalists continued reporting that week on the nascent juvenile justice system and named other
wayward kids: "Little Steve Gubisich is brought into the new juvenile court as an incorrigible," read one
headline.
Over subsequent decades, other states followed Illinois' lead and juvenile courts developed into a firm but
fair surrogate parent trying to balance protection with punishment. Juvenile court judges acted like
doctors trying to diagnose the environmental factors that threatened to hurt kids or lead them astray.
Judges would take into account the child's maturity level and family dynamics before prescribing a

program of help. The guiding principle was to do what was "in the best interest of the child."
Even the vernacular of juvenile court differentiated juvenile justice from the criminal justice system. A child
accused of a law violation was not a defendant who could be found guilty of a crime, but a "respondent"
who was responsible for an act of delinquency. The juvenile justice system would be kept separate from
adult trial courts and handled instead by probate courts that also dealt with commitments of mentally ill
persons to insane asylums and oversaw the estates of the elderly, the infirm or the dead (absent a will).
People believed that children were far more amenable to rehabilitation than were adult criminals. Kids
could be saved from a life of crime by firm guidance and adequate schooling. Juvenile court would be the
place where abused children were protected and misbehaving children corrected. Most juvenile crime fell
into the range of thefts, fights and "status offenses" – things like running away from home, skipping
school, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes that are violations only because of the child's status as a
minor.
An early version of the Illinois law creating the juvenile court called for confidential proceedings. But the
courts were kept open after several legislators and child advocates expressed fears that the court would
engage in child slavery or baby-selling. They worried that do-gooders would take children away from
impoverished or troubled families and send those children to upper-class couples who could not have
children or even to other states where they could be adopted by farming families.
Beginning in the 1850s, needy children were put on trains in New York and sent to states like Michigan,
Iowa and Kansas. The so-called "Orphan Trains'' operated until about the 1920s and, although exact
numbers are unknown, an estimated 150,000 children were exported to less-populous areas. At each
stop, farmers would choose a child or two to adopt, often separating siblings who never saw each other
again.

Chapter 3
Reporting on Drug Law Enforcement
and Controlled Substances
By Bill Wallace
Introduction
The so-called "war on drugs" in the United States began nearly 34 years ago with a declaration by then-
President Richard Nixon that eventually led to enactment of the federal Controlled Substances Act of
1973. Some federal drug control programs already had been in operation for decades, but the new Nixon-
era package formalized and institutionalized earlier efforts, merged disparate federal antidrug agencies
into a new Drug Enforcement Administration, and gave the entire effort a much higher profile. Nixon
grandiosely designated it as a "war."
The increased emphasis on controlling dangerous drugs could be attributed to two factors, one objective
and the other quite subjective.
The objective factor was a marked increase in U.S. users of controlled substances during the 1960s and
1970s, peaking in 1979 at 25.4 million, or 14.1 percent of the population.
The subjective factor was the apparent spread of a youth-oriented drug culture that seemed to challenge
traditional values and pose a threat to the prevailing national culture. Drugs were popularly portrayed in
popular fiction, motion pictures and television programs as closely related to counter-cultural political
attitudes, rock music, left-of-center political radicalism and the movement for greater personal sexual
freedom – all of which were anathema to political conservatives and targets for strident political rhetoric.
Widespread drug abuse is accompanied by an increased need for medical services (including emergency
room visits for overdoses), premature deaths, workdays lost due to drug related disabilities and a variety
of social welfare related costs. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that the annual costs
associated with drug usage climbed from $35 billion in 1975 to $46 billion in 1977 – more than 31
percent. They continued to soar until they peaked at $102 billion in 1980, and then tapered off until 1985.
But by 1992, they had once more started to climb, reaching nearly $98 billion.
The most recent federal study, prepared in September 2001 by the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
the total had reached $143.4 billion.
In recent decades, drug enforcement – stemming the supply of illicit substances and also treating and
educating drug abusers – became an increasingly important and expensive responsibility of state, local
and federal agencies. Measures aimed at controlling the supply side of the drug business had powerful
allies among lawmakers and the huge complex of law-enforcement bureaucracies. Reflecting the public's
concern over crime, these political forces were able to ensure that police and paramilitary programs
became the primary weapon in the war against drugs.
Congress and state legislatures adopted increasingly aggressive programs to block the flow of illegal
drugs into the United States. It started in the late 1960s with Operation Intercept, which was designed to
cut the flow of drugs from Mexico, and included local and national marijuana eradication programs,
proliferating U.S. Coast Guard and Customs Service interdiction efforts, and federal grants to state
attorneys general and local police departments for drug suppression programs.
The movement reached its peak in the last decades of the 20th century, with the militarization of
interdiction efforts in the Caribbean and parts of South America and the direct involvement of U.S. armed
forces units such as the Army Southern Command's Joint Task Force Bravo in Honduras, which
participates in drug suppression operations.

On the domestic front, state, local and federal task forces combined forces for marijuana eradication
programs and formed local Organized Crime Drug Task Forces for a unified approach to prosecuting
major drug dealers. The federal government also awarded millions of dollars in law enforcement
assistance grants to state attorneys general and local police departments for drug suppression projects.
Governments at all levels passed increasingly stringent laws against the sales, possession and use of
dangerous drugs, and federal sentencing guidelines were written to penalize drug users and sellers more
harshly.
The Drug War's Rising Costs

The war on drugs is one of the few governmental programs that have not become the subject of cost-
cutting measures. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says that the federal
government is expected to spend more than $19 billion on drug control in fiscal 2003, up from $17 billion
in fiscal 1999. State spending on drug suppression efforts has increased correspondingly.
The increase in penalties for many offenses has helped fuel the biggest prison construction boom in the
country's history. And a host of government agencies that played no role in the war on drugs during the
Nixon era have been drawn into the battle.
With the shifts in laws and the increasing attention to drug crimes by law enforcement bureaucracies,
drug arrests in the U.S. increased 134 percent in the 1980s. Many jurisdictions sent a growing number of
non-violent inmates to jail and prison for controlled substance offenses.
In an effort to speed case handling and avoid sending some defendants to prison, many areas began to
experiment with drug courts that refer suspects to community based treatment programs, where they can
clean up and get counseling for drug dependencies. In some cases, the courts utilize a form of pre-trial
diversion that allows the defendant to avoid trial – and a criminal record – by satisfactorily completing
detoxification and rehabilitation.
Drug courts proliferated during the 1990s, spreading to more than 42 states and several federal districts.
Some law enforcement officials and judges doubt their effectiveness, while many reformers believe they
prevent too many drug abusers from receiving treatment. In several states, the reformers have
succeeded in passing laws that send first offenders directly to treatment programs rather than to drug
courts, where they could eventually be sentenced to jail or prison terms. This approach has gained some
popularity, because opinion polls have shown that the general public is losing its enthusiasm for the
paramilitary approach toward drug control that has been stressed since the 1970s.
Voters in states such as Arizona and California have passed new laws that decriminalize many drug
offenses and replace incarceration with treatment programs as the primary focus of anti-drug efforts. In
2002, the movement seemed to lose some of its steam. It succeeded in passing a drug treatment ballot
measure in Washington, D.C. [later challenged in court], but lost a similar campaign in Ohio and backed
marijuana decriminalization measures that failed in Nevada, South Dakota and Arizona, the first state to
embrace a decriminalization approach to drug arrests.
As anti-drug efforts have expanded and become more complicated, media coverage of them has
changed accordingly. Journalists assigned to stories about controlled substances these days are advised
to have a knowledge of the legal system, finances and business, social policy, the political process and
even international relations.
For a reporter to cover drug law enforcement operations adequately, a fundamental knowledge of some
of the basic terms used in the field is required.

Chapter 4
Racial and Ethnic Issues
By Melissa Moore
Introduction
Racial and ethnic issues can be some of the most complex and troubling for reporters covering crime and
justice. For crime reporters, these issues exist on at least two levels. The first is that race, racial bias, and
racial discrimination are huge concerns in policing today. To cover policing in your community well, you
cannot avoid them – even if, and particularly if, the agencies you cover are avoiding them. The second is
that how journalists handle issues of race and ethnicity varies tremendously from newspaper to
newspaper, television station to television station. Our coverage itself is often the subject of debate and is
subject to allegations of bias and discrimination.
To complicate matters, most Americans, regardless of their color or background, are not comfortable
discussing the realities of race in America and in the criminal justice system. The aggrieved are most
likely to talk about it, but that alone doesn't make for thorough, balanced reporting. It's critical, and
sometimes quite difficult, to seek out the opinions and views of the powerful and to hold them accountable
when those views do not reflect the interests of the community or when those views do not match with
reality.
Issues of race and crime can be politically and emotionally charged. To best serve readers and viewers,
reporters should ensure that the information their stories add to the debate is both accurate and fair.
It's important to realize that what reporters choose to include in the stories they cover helps shape public
perception of race and crime issues.
In many communities, people of one race are unlikely to mix on a daily basis with people of another race.
One way each race learns about the other is through the media. Crime coverage is of tremendous
interest to people of all races and may affect their perceptions, even when that is not what the writer
intended.
Race, Crime and Poverty

In many minds, the image of a dangerous, violent criminal is that of a young black man. Advocates for the
vast majority of young black men who are not criminals blame the media in part for this image.
The FBI Uniform Crime Reports track reported crime and arrests for most U.S. law enforcement agencies.
The reporting system is incomplete, but it provides some insight into who is being arrested for crimes.
The FBI reported 9,306,587 arrests for everything more serious than traffic offenses nationwide in 2001.
Of those arrested, 69.5 percent were white and 28.1 percent black.
The 2000 Census shows that about 75.1 percent of the more than 281 million residents of the U.S. are
white and about 12.3 percent are black, so black people in 2001 were arrested at more than twice their
proportion of the population.
The FBI reports do shed some interesting light on who is getting arrested. Murder arrests were almost
evenly divided between black and white, with 4,561 white people arrested for murder or non-negligent
manslaughter and 4,585 black people arrested for those crimes.
In every category of violent crime except robbery, black people were arrested disproportionately more
than their share of the population, but still in far fewer numbers than white people. For robbery, 53.8
percent of those arrested are black and 44.5 percent are white.

All together, there were 260,983 arrests of whites in 2001 for violent crimes – which include murder, rape,
robbery and aggravated assault – and 163,192 arrests of blacks. For the property crimes of burglary,
theft, auto theft and arson, there were 738,080 arrests of whites and 350,879 arrests of blacks.
For drug offenses, believed by many to a particular source of racial disparity in the justice system, of just
over one million arrests, 64.2 percent were white and 34.5 percent black.
The Sentencing Project, a national organization devoted to examining the effects of incarceration and its
potential alternatives, says that it is easy for police to arrest drug dealers who hang out on street corners
and the customers who purchase their wares. Because they are easier to arrest than more affluent
suburbanites who deal drugs by word of mouth in private spaces, the urban dealers are more likely to
develop criminal records and subject themselves to longer sentences when they are arrested again.
Are Blacks Over-Arrested for Drug Violations?

Drawing on several federal reports from the late 1990s, the Sentencing Project concluded that while
blacks comprised about 13 percent of all people who use drugs at least once a month, but they were 35
percent of state-level drug possession arrests, 53 percent of convictions and 58 percent of those in prison
on drug convictions.
These numbers may not reflect arrest rates in your community, but you should be able to obtain at least
the FBI data for each agency you cover.
The report that the department sends to the FBI for national tabulations is called the "Age, Sex and Race"
form; each agency that participates in the Uniform Crime Reporting program submits two forms each
month. One covers arrests of people under 18. The other covers arrests of people 18 and over. The same
information is available from the FBI, although usually not so quickly.
You can also purchase these data, and other FBI Uniform Crime Reports figures, for your area, state or
the nation from the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting at http://www.nicar.org. Click on
"Database Library" and then "Government Database Collection" to see what is available. Prices are
based on newspaper circulation or television market ranking.
This data may make a standalone story when you first get it, but they also serve as excellent background
material to inform other stories you write about arrests and crime rates.
Arrest data can tell you the race of people arrested for crimes. They can't tell you the race of the criminals
in the vast majority of crimes that remain unsolved.
Also, arrest data, particularly in drug cases, tell you more about where police chose to look for drug use
and drug dealing than where it actually is happening.
Much of the data can be used to get an idea of who, in terms of race and ethnicity, is committing crimes in
your community. But it can't tell you why.
The intersection of race, crime and poverty is part of explaining the whys. The 2001 Current Population
Survey report from the U.S. Census Bureau called "Poverty in the United States" says that in 2001, the
poverty rate was 7.8 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 22.7 percent for blacks and 21.4 percent for
Hispanic.
Many factors relative to race, poverty and crime are circular and cyclical.
Poor people often do not have significant political clout and have a difficult time getting their voices heard
in government.

The Sentencing Project estimates that 13 percent of black men cannot vote as a consequence of a felony
conviction. People who can't vote are not likely to participate much in the governmental process.
The black conviction rate is so high that nearly one in seven black men age 25-29 was in state or federal
prison or a local jail, the Sentencing Project reported in 2001. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics
says that the lifetime chance of going to prison for men born in 1991 is 29 percent for black men, 16
percent for Hispanic men and four percent for white men.
High incarceration rates of black men, and the lost job opportunities that follow felony conviction and
prison stints, mean that large numbers of black women cannot find husbands. They wind up raising
children alone.
Women-headed households are, on the whole, far more likely to live in poverty. Census data from 1999
show that 9.2 percent of families overall live below poverty level. Of families headed by women, 26.5
percent live below poverty level.
As part of a double whammy for black men who have been to prison, the decreased job opportunities
increase the odds that they will return to criminal activity.
As a reporter, you can find good stories looking beyond the numbers to the whys. Put yourself in the
position of a person who fits into the statistics you're writing about, or better yet, talk to some people in
that position. Their voices often are not included in our stories, but we and readers will benefit from the
wisdom of their experiences.

Chapter 5
Covering Crime and Its Victims
By Suzette Hackney
Introduction
How do news organizations decide what crimes to report? Because competitors will have the story?
Because an editor finds the story interesting or has a friend who is involved? Is the story reported
because of the seriousness, heinousness, or uniqueness of the case? Or is it simply a matter of
identifying a new crime trend?
All of those factors can play a part. Crime is covered for a variety of reasons, and interviewing victims of
crime is an essential part of a journalist's job.
Reporting on crime is important to give society an overall view of the criminal justice system, says Lisa R.
Manns, a Chicago Tribune assistant city editor. "We find out what's working, what isn't working, where our
tax dollars are being spent," she says. "People need to be aware as to what's going on in their areas so
they can protect themselves, in every sense. But every crime is not a story, and sometimes we lose sight
of that and forget about the bigger picture in our eagerness to be first with news. Sometimes we need to
step back and say what is our motivation for doing this story? Are we really giving people information
that's new, that's different, that's helpful?"
The news media play a significant role in public safety by providing important information about the nature
and extent of crime and efforts to prevent crime and assist victims. Timely and sensitive coverage can be
helpful, particularly when it publicizes the abduction of a missing child or provides information on
emergency services after a disaster. High-profile coverage of specific cases and emerging crimes has
contributed to changes in public policy, including recognition of the need for community notification of
released sex offenders and anti-stalking laws. It has also helped to change public attitudes about the
seriousness of violent crimes such as drunk driving and rape.
Covering crime and its victims requires perspective, persistence and patience. It's a beat where rookie
reporters are often assigned, but it is one of the most challenging in any newsroom. Many victims never
have had contact with the media. They feel overwhelmed, distrustful and scared. Imagine that after a
horrible crime, a pack of reporters, with cameras and tape recorders rolling, surround you and yell out
questions.
Common concerns of victims about news media practices include interviews with survivors at
inappropriate times; video and photographs of scenes with bodies and body bags; stories that feature
"negative" aspects of victims' lives; and printing or broadcasting a victim's name or address. The issue of
privacy of the individual versus the freedom of the press is a contentious one, and the related issue of
victims' rights often creates a battleground. Many journalists realize that while they may have a legal right
to publish or broadcast certain information, they have an ethical responsibility to go further and balance
the potential for public good against the private harm that may result from exposure.
It's important to realize that by publishing a victim's story, you may be helping the victim. It's an age-old
journalism rule, but there really are two sides to every story. As reporters, we tend to rely on police
accounts or the "official version" of an incident, but a victim often lends a unique perspective. Along those
lines, a victim's story can truly connect with your viewers, readers or listeners, who appreciate real,
human tales. The Tribune's Manns says that "Interviewing a victim brings it home for the reader. It gives
them someone they can identify with, and makes their reading or viewing experience all that much more
personal. It's just not a faceless, nameless character. It's real."
Who is a Victim?
From a clinical standpoint, a victim is someone who has been intentionally harmed by another person;

has experienced a lowering in importance or dominance; or has suffered. Psychologists say the suffering
may include pain, rage, depression, loss of mental or physical capacity, and shame to the point of
humiliation and self-imposed isolation. The victim category includes not only people who have been
wronged, but also their family members or close friends. Victims of violent crime suffer from injury and
injustice. Journalists and those who work in the fields of law enforcement, criminal justice, social service,
health, and mental health should understand the variety of injuries, physical and psychological, that are
experienced by victims. That includes the stigma attached to victims in our society, the isolation,
ostracism, and humiliation they often feel, regardless of their innocence. We must know that, despite
billions of dollars spent on courts, corrections, police, probation and parole systems, many victims are
neglected. Though the number of victim advocacy programs is growing, they still reach only a small
fraction of victims with meaningful services, say leaders of the victim-aid movement.
The totals have declined since the first federal victimization survey was issued in 1973, but in 2001, there
were an estimated 5.7 million violent victimizations in the United States among more than 24 million
personal and property times. That was the estimate of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics; its totals
exceed those reported in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (1.4 million violent crimes in 2001), because
the victimization survey includes crimes not reported to law enforcement.
It's best to think of victims in three categories: high-risk, medium-risk and low-risk. High-risk victims could
be prostitutes, substance abusers and women who travel alone at night. A medium-risk victim is someone
who leads a relatively normal life, but does something that could be dangerous, like choosing to use an
ATM at night while alone. A low-risk victim is just that, someone who should normally have no interaction
with the criminal element. Still, journalists must never fall prey to the temptation to demonize victims. The
fact that the woman who was murdered was a prostitute may help explain the dynamics of why she got
into a car with a man that she did not know. But that does not in any way justify what happened to her.
Never forget it's not our job to judge, only to tell the truth through reporting and writing.

Chapter 6
Journalism Ethics
By David Krajicek
Introduction
Journalism ethics can seem as simple as those what-I-learned-in-kindergarten platitudes:
• Be honest and fair.

• Don't lie or steal.
• Don't take advantage of people.
• Don't fabricate.
• Accept no gifts and promise no favors.
• Be considerate of your power and responsibility.
• Maintain integrity and good taste.
• Show compassion.
• Keep an open mind to criticism, and correct mistakes.
Many ethics questions can be resolved with a simple moral compass: If is seems wrong, it probably is
wrong. Of course, some issues are more subtle, whether the question is on a grand scale or seemingly
incidental:
• Do we intrude on grief when we pursue the loved ones of crime victims?

• Should we cover suicides, beyond those of prominent people or those committed in a public
place? If three students die of suicide in your city in one semester, is this a legitimate trend story,
even if school officials caution about copycats?
• As a reporter, are you compelled to explain the potential ramifications when a juvenile or feeble-
minded person consents to an interview?
• Does your news organization report arrests or citations for soliciting prostitution? If not, what if a
prominent person is cited? If so, what do tell a man who complains that he stands to lose his
family or job as a result of a line or two of agate type?
• Is it ethical to make deals with police sources – for example, to hold a story for a few days in
exchange for the exclusive first call after an arrest or major break? And what if public safety is a
consideration? Police often ask reporters to hold stories they believe might spook a suspect in
serial crimes, including rapes. What do you do?
• Is it ethical to do "favor" stories for sources who solicit them – a feature about a judge's aspiring
actor son, or a "positive" piece about the police union's annual Christmas donation drive?
• How does your news operation choose its crime stories? Are decisions based upon socio-
economics, race, gender or celebrity? Does geography play a role? Will a homicide in a gated
suburb get more play than one in a "transitional" neighborhood near downtown? If so, does a life
have more news value in the suburbs?
· Are some stories so important or competitive that you are willing to bend ethics or break laws?
And how is that different from the "Dirty Harry Syndrome" or "noble-cause corruption" in law
enforcement?
• When you have named a crime suspect in a story, do you always follow through on the case,
whether it leads to dismissal or conviction?
Pat Doyle, a late and legendary New York crime reporter, was famous (or notorious) for an old Front
Page-style reporter's trick. He would call an outlying police precinct and identify himself as "Doyle from
Downtown," as in police headquarters, and press for inside skinny about a crime. Who could blame cops
on the other end of the line for assuming that Doyle was a police kahuna, not a mere scribe?

The gimmick was not technically dishonest; he was Doyle, and he was downtown. But ethics go beyond
technical honesty to morality.
Retired journalism professor Melvin Mencher offers four good suggestions about moral decision-making
in his book News Reporting and Writing:
• Be wary of treating people as a means to an end.

• Believe on the basis of facts, not hope.
• Be committed to a value system but be free from ideologies and commitments that limit thought.
• Be wary of promising to help a source in return for material.
Ethics and Integrity

Many news organizations publish policies on ethics. (For a sampling, see theresources sidebar.)
The New York Times offers a practical ethical primer in its "Guidelines on Our Integrity." It reads in part:
"Our greatest strength is the authority and reputation of The Times. We must do nothing that would
undermine or dilute it and everything possible to enhance it. At a time of growing and even justified public
suspicion about the impartiality, accuracy and integrity of some journalists and some journalism, it is
imperative that The Times and its staff maintain the highest possible standards to insure that we do
nothing that might erode readers' faith and confidence in our news columns. This means that staff
members should be vigilant in avoiding any activity that might pose an actual or apparent conflict of
interest and thus threaten the newspaper's ethical standing. And it also means that the journalism we
practice daily must be beyond reproach. No one needs to be reminded that falsifying any part of a news
report cannot be tolerated and will result automatically in disciplinary action up to and including
termination."
The Times guidelines include these points:
• Quotations. Readers should be able to assume that every word between quotation marks is
what the speaker or writer said. The Times does not "clean up" quotations.
• Other People's Reporting. When we use facts gathered by any other organization, we attribute
them. This policy applies to material from newspapers, magazines, books and broadcasts, as well
as news agencies like The Associated Press…Attribution to another publication, though, cannot
serve as license to print rumors that would not meet the test of The Times'sown reporting
standards.
• Corrections. The Times recognizes an ethical responsibility to correct all its factual errors, large
and small.
• Fictional Devices. No reader should find cause to suspect that the paper would knowingly alter
facts. For that reason, The Times refrains outright from assigning fictional names, ages, places or
dates, and it strictly limits the use of other concealment devices.
• Masquerading. Times reporters do not actively misrepresent their identity to get a story. We may
sometimes remain silent on our identity and allow assumptions to be made – to observe an
institution's dealings with the public, for example, or the behavior of people at a rally or police
officers in a bar near the station house. But a sustained, systematic deception, even a passive
one – taking a job, for example, to observe a business from the inside – may be employed only
after consultation between a department head and masthead editors.

Chapter 7
Covering the Courts
By Maurice Possley
Introduction
“Scarcely any question arises in the United States which does not become, sooner or later, a
subject of judicial debate.”
If anything, that statement has only become more accurate in more than 150 years since Alexis de
Tocqueville made the observation in “Democracy in America.”
One need look no further than the explosion of books, movies, and television (indeed, an entire network
in Court TV) programs dedicated to covering issues and cases in America’s legal system. The court beat
has always been an important one, but in recent years, spurred largely by the televised trial of O.J.
Simpson, covering the courts—both the civil and criminal divisions—has become exponentially more
significant. It is a beat that intersects with virtually every other beat in journalism at one time or another
because its very nature is to resolve society’s disputes, to interpret the nation’s laws, and to enforce the
fundamental protections of law.
When I began covering a court beat in 1974 in Chicago for the City News Bureau, I had no legal
education or training. City News, a wire service owned by Chicago’s major daily newspapers, was
operated as a training ground for journalists as well as a supplemental source of information for the
newspapers, as well as radio and television outlets that subscribed to the service. I quickly realized how
little I knew, but at the same I discovered that this was the most exciting and thought-provoking beat I had
covered in my young career. Most of my 30 years in the business have been devoted to covering the
courts and the legal system, and I find it to be more challenging and rewarding than ever.
More than anything else, the law shapes and holds our society together. The courts are responsible for a
broad range of American life, ranging from issues such as taxes, abortion, elections, crime, free speech,
health care, environment, and free enterprise. The law controls how these things affect our lives. It is
crucial that reporters not only translate the often arcane into language that all can understand, but that
they connect the rulings and decisions in individual cases to the everyday lives of our citizens.
These three chapters of the Criminal Justice Journalists-National Center for Courts and Media Guide to
Reporting offer information and tips about court beat coverage, developing sources, finding records,
obtaining access, where to look for story ideas, how to do enterprise reporting, and a basic legal primer.
The guide is designed to benefit those assigned full-time to the beat as well as those who drop in to cover
a single case or issue. It is broken into two parts—civil and criminal—although there is some overlap. It is
not intended to provide a legal education, but more of an understanding of how the court system operates
and how a reporter can go about reporting on what occurs there.
Court Organization
The U.S. courts are organized by jurisdiction and function. First of all, there are two basic court systems—
federal and state. Within each court system there are different levels of function—trials, intermediate
appeals and final appeals.
Each state is empowered to determine how its court system will be organized under its own constitution
and laws. The federal court system is organized under the U.S. Constitution.
In the lowest or trial court level, cases are initiated and initial judgments are made—whether by
agreement of all parties or by judge or jury. This is where lawsuits are filed, criminal charges are brought

and trials are conducted. This is the level where evidence is heard and judgments—whether by judge or
by jury—are rendered. It is by far the largest layer of the legal system. Some jurisdictions have hundreds
of judges and within the trial court level are a wide variety of layers—ranging from small claims courts
where litigants bring cases on their own behalf to civil and criminal courts subdivided by the gravity of the
charge (misdemeanor vs. felony) or the type of action (damages vs. injunctive relief). More than 90
percent of all cases are disposed of in this arena and it is where the majority of court reporting occurs.
The intermediate appellate division, typically organized by geographical considerations and sometimes
split between civil and criminal, is where verdicts rendered in the trial division are reviewed for errors of
law and procedure. The appellate court does not hear new evidence or evaluate the truth or reliability of
evidence that was heard in the trial courts. Instead, it is in this level of the legal process where judges
decide whether the trial court proceedings were handled properly under the existing and applicable laws.
Strict laws control what can be heard and argued on the appellate level. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court
has ruled in a Texas Death Row case, Herrera v. Collins, that proof of actual innocence is not an
automatic ground for winning an appeal.
The final level of appeal is what we know as our “supreme” courts. The state supreme courts handle a
small number of the cases that emerge from the intermediate appeals courts and in some instances,
certain cases, such as death penalty convictions, are appealed directly to the state supreme courts,
bypassing the intermediate appeals courts.
Each state has its own court system that operates on laws that are enacted within that state. Typically,
state courts are organized by county and city and into divisions of courts based on the types of cases,
such as traffic or civil damage lawsuits—or the seriousness of the case, such misdemeanor and felony
charges. Chicago, for example, is located in the Cook County Circuit Court—one of 104 county court
organizations in Illinois.

Chapter 8
Covering Criminal Courts
By Maurice Possley
Motions
A variety of motions may be filed before trial. High profile cases—such as the prosecution of Oklahoma
City bomber Timothy McVeigh or the murder prosecution of O.J. Simpson—are good examples of cases
where a blizzard of motions was filed. Arguments and rulings by judges on each motion may produce
individual stories that help readers or listeners understand how a case is unfolding and is being shaped
for trial. Further, many motions may contain attachments such as police reports, crime laboratory reports,
grand jury transcripts, and other information that would not otherwise be publicly disclosed prior to trial.
All of these motions potentially can generate news stories, particularly those motions that potentially can
change the location of the trial, the dismissal of some or all of the charges, or the suppression of
evidence.
Motions – oral and written – can also reveal bigger issues or problems with system itself. Controversies
over use of paid informants, jailhouse snitches, scandals in crime laboratories, and the use of torture to
exact confessions from murder suspects are all examples of stories that emerged by studying these
motions carefully. Motions may include:
--Change of venue: This is a motion to shift the trial to another judge or to another jurisdiction due to
perceived bias by a judge or jurors. There may be a motion to select a jury from another jurisdiction and
bring that jury back to the original courthouse for trial.
--Gag orders: These can take many forms, all designed to limit public exposure. There can be motions to
close a proceeding, to bar prosecutors or defense lawyers from speaking to the press or from speaking
about the case in public, or to put under seal certain documents. It is up to reporters to object to such
limitations and to seek guidance from editors and legal counsel for their organizations on whether to seek
to intervene and oppose such motions. The term “gag order” is a media phrase that is applied generally to
what judges and lawyers often call a “protective order.” Judges have been known to institute them on
their own if they believe lawyers—defense or prosecution—are spending too much time trying their cases
in the media instead of the courtroom. Typically, however, such orders are requested by either the
prosecution or the defense.
--Postponements: These can be routine continuance motions or more significant motions requesting
delays due to pre-trial publicity or late disclosure of documents or belated discovery of new evidence by
defense lawyers or prosecutors.
--Bond: A defendant may file a motion to reduce the bond, or the prosecution may move to increase it.
--Dismissal: Defense lawyers may file motions seeking to dismiss some or all of the charges.
--Subpoenas: Motions may be filed to block subpoenas for evidence or witnesses. Defense lawyers may
file motions requesting issuance of subpoenas for certain evidence or witnesses.
--Severance: In cases with multiple defendants, motions for separate trials may be filed. These motions
may reveal trial strategy and crucial prosecution evidence—such as the existence of
statements/confessions made by defendants implicating co-defendants.
--Forensics: Motions challenging crime laboratory reports may be filed. There may be motions filed by
prosecutors requesting that defendants provide hair or blood samples or fingerprints. There may be
motions filed by defense lawyers seeking independent testing of evidence. Beginning in the 1990s, the
U.S. Supreme Court sought to impose greater scientific rigor on forensic testimony. In a defining 1993

decision, Daubert vs. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, the court demanded that such testimony not simply
meet the existing standard of “general acceptance” in its field, but also address some of the hallmarks of
scientific inquiry—testing, peer review, and rates of error.
--Depositions: In some jurisdictions and/or in some prosecutions, such as death penalty cases, certain
witnesses, such as jailhouse snitches, may be questioned under oath before trial. Motions may be filed
seeking to interview under oath—also known as taking a deposition—other witnesses or to block such
depositions.
--Production of Evidence: Defense attorneys will almost always file a motion seeking “Brady material,”
which is exculpatory evidence that could possibly indicate that the defendant is not guilty. For example,
any evidence, including tips to police, of other possible suspects, is considered Brady material, which is
named after the Supreme Court case Brady v. U.S.
--Mental competency: There may be motions seeking psychiatric examinations of defendants as well as
motions seeking hearings on the mental competency of the accused.
--Suppression: There may be motions challenging a confession or inculpatory statement—an admission

of involvement or guilt. These motions may result in a pre-trial hearing on whether a suspect was properly
questioned by law enforcement, whether a statement/confession was voluntarily and lawfully obtained, or
whether a statement will be allowed into evidence at trial. There also may be motions to suppress—or
keep out of evidence—statements from witnesses, physical evidence seized by police during their
investigation, or past crimes by defendants.
--Other evidence: Prosecutors may file motions seeking to introduce evidence of other crimes committed
by the accused—whether those crimes have been charged or not.
--Proffers: From time to time, prosecutors may file or be required to file proffers of some of their
evidence—particularly in cases where a conspiracy is charged—that includes co-conspirator statements.
A proffer is the prosecution’s outline of the anticipated state’s evidence. One of the most enlightening
documents that prosecutors may file in a federal case is called a Santiago proffer, in which the
government lays out the bulk of its case, often connecting the dots among alleged co-conspirators,
offering motives and details, and explaining what witnesses are expected to say at trial. Remember that
this is the view of the prosecution without the benefit of any cross-examination. In Chicago in 2004,
prosecutors in the conspiracy case against former Illinois Gov. George Ryan sought to file such a proffer
under seal, arguing that the potential jury pool would be tainted by its publication. After Chicago Tribune
lawyers opposed the bid to file it under seal, a federal judge ordered it made public.
--Jury selection: Motions may be filed challenging the selection of the grand jury or the trial jury. These
motions primarily focus on the composition of the jury venire, which is the pool from which jurors are
selected. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that jury venires must be a “representative cross-section
of the community.” Lawyers will frequently challenge the composition of the pool if certain demographic
segments of the community –Latinos, African-Americans, women, young adults – are under-represented
in the jury pool compared to their percentages in the local community. There may be motions to
sequester the trial jury, to select it from another jurisdiction or to conduct the questioning of prospective
jurors individually and behind closed doors.
--Legal representation and financing: There may be motions to allow the defendant to proceed “pro
se,” that is, without a lawyer. There may be motions seeking court-authorized payment—using public
funds—to hire experts, additional lawyers, or investigators or to pay for independent testing of evidence.

Chapter 9
Covering Civil Courts
By Maurice Possley
Introduction
Like the criminal justice system, most civil cases are not newsworthy, but civil litigation historically has
played a significant role in the evolution of society and our laws.
Some of the most important cases in U.S. history have been civil lawsuits that, for example, have
desegregated schools (Brown v. Board of Education) and legalized abortion (Roe v. Wade). Other civil
cases have defined and interpreted First Amendment/free speech, affirmative action, and prayer in the
school. The government is one of the most frequent and powerful plaintiffs in the civil justice system.
For example, state attorney general lawsuits against the tobacco industry and price-fixing lawsuits against
the pharmaceutical industry have had a direct impact on millions of people.
For many court reporters, the civil court is the stepchild of the criminal courts. Unlike criminal cases, most
of which carry possible prison sentences and involve a crime against the public, the cases that wind their
way through the civil branch of the court system are the result of mostly private disputes between parties
that have not been resolved by out-of-court negotiations. Many of these cases are of little news interest
because these disputes involve no significant legal issues or center around disagreements of a highly
specific and esoteric nature between little-known parties. Many are what are called “tort” cases—those
involving individuals who have been injured and are seeking compensation. While there are thousands
upon thousands of civil cases filed yearly, typically, only a small percentage rise to the level of being
newsworthy.
From Personal Injuries To Patents

But the civil court arena is a most fascinating place to find news. Here, members of society seek justice
on their own. It is in civil court that parties may seek damages for such actions as breach of contract,
personal injuries, civil rights violations, illegal job dismissals, and wrongful deaths. In civil court,
individuals, corporations and public bodies may seek enforcement of laws, interpretation of laws, or
declarations that laws are unconstitutional. Companies seek protection of trade secrets and patents,
enforcement of contract provisions, or businesses may attempt to block competitors from taking them
over.
The disputes can range from an action demanding payment of medical bills from a dog bite to an anti-
trust case against a corporate giant. Civil courts routinely address matters ranging from fender bender
auto accidents to securities fraud. Lawsuits are filed alleging medical and legal malpractice, defamation
and libel, child custody and failure to pay bills.
It is by following cases in the civil courts that we learn of Stella Liebeck, whose lawyers persuaded a jury
in Albuquerque, N.M., to award her $2.9 million in 1994 after she spilled a cup of coffee from a
McDonald’s restaurant on her lap. (The judgment was later reduced to $640,000 and the case was later
settled for an undisclosed amount while on appeal. As an aside, in 2004, Olga Kuznetsova sued a
McDonald’s in Moscow for 100,000 rubles--about $3,500--alleging a similar coffee spill.) But for
journalists, the Stella Liebeck case is a cautionary tale. While some tort reform advocates have used the
case as an example of runaway juries, there are others who are familiar with the facts in the case and
contend the jurors did the right thing. This raises significant issues: Did the media report this case
correctly or was it wrong? How many reporters have cited or referred to the Liebeck case as an example
of a runaway juror without interviewing the jurors or conducting basic research into the facts of the case?
The case is an excellent example of the pitfalls of writing about a case without doing the proper research.

Cases that have made headlines include the federal government’s antitrust lawsuit against computer
behemoth Microsoft as well as the wrongful death lawsuit brought against O.J. Simpson by the family of
Ron Goldman, who was slain along with Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole, in 1994. (A judgment was entered
against Simpson for $33.5 million.)
Cases such as these are the exceptions for their national notoriety. Amidst the tens of thousands of other
lawsuits filed each year in the U.S. are many other cases that become newsworthy for the very same
reasons that any dispute or public action makes news:
 The parties are known to the public or are significant because of their role in public-policy making
or operation of government.
 The factual and legal issues are of public interest.
From Frivolous To Historic

A reporter should always keep in mind that given the litigious nature of our society, just about any
controversy or question that is imaginable can and often does wind up in civil court. However, some
cases that were initially described as frivolous later came to be classified as historic. A good example is
the 1994 lawsuit filed by the state of Mississippi against the tobacco industry. At the outset, the litigation
was universally denounced as without merit. But four years later, 40 more states came to file similar
lawsuits and, ultimately, the cases settled for $246 billion. The following descriptions and information
apply generally to both state and federal courts.
The vast majority of legal disputes in American courts are addressed in state court. For example, state
courts have jurisdiction over virtually all divorce and child custody matters, probate and inheritance
issues, real estate questions, and juvenile matters, and they handle most contract disputes, traffic
violations, and personal injury cases.
Before a court can hear a case, certain conditions must be met. That means deciding which forum—
federal or state—controls the questions at issue. State courts resolve matters set forth under state
constitutions and federal courts exercise their powers under the U.S. Constitution. While the U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled that the 14th Amendment incorporated the Sixth Amendment relating to state
courts in criminal cases, it never has ruled that the Seventh Amendment applies to state courts in civil
cases.
Assuming there is an actual case or controversy, the plaintiff in a federal or state lawsuit also must have
legal “standing” to ask the court for a decision. That means the plaintiff must have been legally harmed in
some way by the defendant.
The case must present a category of dispute that the law in question was designed to address, and it
must be a complaint that the court has the power to remedy. That means the court must be authorized,
under whichever constitution applies or under state or federal law, to hear the case and grant appropriate
relief.

Chapter 10
How Prosecutors Work
By Steve Weinberg
Introduction
[Author’s note: Some of the philosophy and much of the procedure useful in writing about prosecutors can
be found elsewhere in “Covering Crime and Justice,” especially in portions of Chapter One, “The Crime
Beat,”by Dave Krajicek and portions of Chapter Eight, “Covering Criminal Courts,” by Maurice Possley.]
For most of his career, Mike Nifong received little attention outside Durham County, North Carolina,
where voters elected him district attorney.
In 2006, Nifong decided to prosecute Duke University lacrosse players who allegedly gang raped an
escort service dancer.
What happened later demonstrated vividly that prosecutors possess untrammeled power to charge
individuals with crimes, even individuals who are innocent. In 2007, Nifong dropped the case after
causing incalculable direct harm to dozens of individuals and families, while spending precious taxpayer
dollars on a wrongheaded prosecution. He resigned from office and was disbarred from law practice.
What is unusual about the case is not Nifong’s wrongheadedness or the damage done by it. What is
unusual is that the public found out about a prosecutor misusing power. Journalists, defense lawyers and
disciplinary authorities did their jobs well, in plain view. Most of the time, prosecutors—whether doing
their jobs well or poorly—function without their constituents knowing anything. Joseph Neff, a reporter at
the Raleigh News & Observer, covered the conduct of Nifong as it unfolded, affecting public perception,
then published an insightful multi-part retrospective. Earlier in his career, Neff’s skilled investigation of an
alleged wrongful conviction led to the exoneration of an inmate.
If only more reporters like Joseph Neff (plus his daily and project editors) inhabited newsrooms.
Every county has an elected or an appointed prosecutor. (As of 2007, only Alaska, Connecticut, New
Jersey, and Washington, D.C., use the appointment process.) Some prosecutors serve more than one
county, which brings the count of local chief prosecutor across the United States to 2344. Each of those
prosecutors—most commonly called a District Attorney or a Prosecuting Attorney—hires lawyers,
investigators and support staff. A 2006 study by Steven W. Perry in the Bureau of Justice Statistics,
Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice notes that the number of employees
nationwide totals about 78,000—lawyers, investigators, victim advocates and support staff.
Voters elect an attorney general in most states. (In Alaska, Hawaii, New Hampshire, New Jersey and
Wyoming, the attorney general is appointed by the governor, and by the mayor in Washington, D.C. In
Maine, the legislature chooses the attorney general. In Tennessee, the state supreme court chooses the
attorney general.) Each attorney general hires lawyers, investigators and support staff. They rarely
handle local criminal trial work, unless the local prosecutor requests assistance. Instead the lawyers for
the state concentrate on appeals by defense lawyers meant to set aside convictions won by district
attorneys. That appellate function is almost always ignored or, at best, sporadically covered by
journalists.
How Federal Prosecutors Differ
Furthermore, every state is served by at least one federal prosecutor, tapped by the U. S. attorney
general, who in turn is appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the United

States Senate. After Senate confirmation, each state-based United States attorney hires lawyers,
investigators and support staff. They prosecute crimes that have been deemed federal offenses by the
United States Congress. The sometimes political nature of the U. S. Attorney job has been especially
well-publicized during the presidential administration of George W. Bush, who removed at least nine U. S.
Attorneys during his second term. U. S. Attorneys and local prosecutors both must deal with politics while
they make case-by-case decisions. The politics affecting U. S. Attorneys often emanates from above at
the Justice Department or even the White House. With district attorneys, the politics usually come from
below or sideways, because there is no “above.”
In most ways, journalists can use the same coverage techniques for local and federal prosecutors. It is
wise to keep at least two big-picture differences in mind, however.
First, U. S. attorneys are less accountable to the citizenry than are district attorneys, because the federal
prosecutors are picked in a distant locale (Washington, D. C.) rather than elected. Second, the federal
prosecutor’s reach is wider and deeper. The federal laws they enforce affect citizens everywhere, not just
in a county or a state. Thousands of federal laws exist. State and local governments sometimes mimic the
federal government in the content of the laws they approve and how much priority they give to
enforcement. So, for example, a crackdown on drug possession offenses by the U. S. attorney might lead
to more aggressive handling of drug possession cases by district attorneys.
All of this adds up to a lot of prosecutors who need scrutinizing by journalists, for all sorts of reasons.
Prosecutors, however, usually receive coverage in only two instances—at election time, and when a
major case goes to trial.
Because most prosecutors serve four years between elections, and because in most jurisdictions at least
95 percent of all charged crimes never reach trial, a significant percentage of the wise decisions and
stupid decisions, the ethical decisions and venal decisions, go unreported by journalists. That means
elected prosecutors and the lawyers they employ can, and sometimes do, bend and break the rules.
Defense lawyers are generally powerless to remedy the situation. Judges possess the power, but rarely
exercise it, in some instances because the judges are former prosecutors. County executives could serve
as checks on district attorneys through control of the budget, but many fear that budget reductions would
lead to a soft-on-crime label.
The reasons for inept coverage are numerous: Journalists view prosecutors as virtuous generals in the
war against crime, journalists fail to understand that most of a prosecutor’s job takes place behind closed
doors, and the traditional newsroom beat system known in shorthand as “cops and courts” omits the
public official who is the linchpin. Unscientific surveys indicate that in many newsrooms, many of the
journalists cannot name the elected district attorney, and hardly any of those journalists can name the U.
S. attorney. As for name recognition of the powerful tria

Chapter 11
Guns and Gun Control
By David J. Krajicek
Introduction
During my time as a crime reporter at the New York Daily News, I kept at hand on my desk at One Police
Plaza a dog-eared copy of Gun Digest, the self-described “World’s Greatest Gun Book.”
When I wrote about a 9mm Luger used to kill a cop or an Intratec Tec-9 submachine used in a gang
shooting, I wanted to see that model of the gun—to read its specs, to learn where it was manufactured, to
understand how it operated.
I may have been obsessive.
But reporters often are accurately accused by gun buffs of getting nearly every detail wrong when writing
about firearms—everything from confusing a shotgun gauge with a rifle caliber to failing to know the
difference between an automatic and a semi-automatic.
Before the Internet, there was a paucity of information immediately available to help reporters write
smartly and accurately about guns. Gun Digest helped, and I still recommend that every crime reporter
have his or her own copy (less than $10 at amazon.com).
This backgrounder should help, as well.
It begins with my essay about America’s “gun culture” and our complicated relationship with firearms.
Subsequent chapters provide basic information about guns, including how many there are in America;
thumbnails of some of the country’s seminal gun crimes and gun laws; background on and analyses of
the Second Amendment; profiles of some of the organizations that are key players in the gun debate, and
a list of story suggestions and resources for journalists.
I hope reporters and editors find the information useful.
David J. Krajicek
June 2007
Red Falls, New York
The American Gun Conundrum
“The United States is the only modern industrial urban nation that persists in maintaining a gun culture. It
is the only industrial nation in which the possession of rifles, shotguns, and handguns is lawfully prevalent
among large numbers of its population.
“It is the only such nation that has been impelled in recent years to agonize at length about its own
disposition toward violence and to set up a commission to examine it, the only nation so attached to the
supposed ’right’ to bear arms that its laws abet assassins, professional criminals, berserk murderers, and
political terrorists at the expense of the orderly population—and yet it remains, and is apparently
determined to remain, the most passive of all the major countries in the matter of gun control.
“Many otherwise intelligent Americans cling with pathetic stubbornness to the notion that the people’s
right to bear arms is the greatest protection of their individual rights and a firm safeguard of democracy.”

It has been nearly 40 years since Richard Hofstadter, a Columbia University historian, published his
famous (or infamous, depending upon your firearms point of view) lament about our national “gun culture”
in American Heritage magazine.
As he wrote those words in 1970, America had just endured a decade that was book-ended by firearms
assassinations—President John Kennedy in 1963, civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential
candidate Robert Kennedy a few months apart in 1968. Roughly midway between those events, in
August 1966, an alienated young man ascended a tower at the University of Texas in Austin and fired
indiscriminately at pedestrians below, killing 15 and wounding 31.
It was a trying time—not least because the violence attracted international scorn that cast a shadow on a
nation that regarded itself as peerless.
Hofstadter wrote that after the King and Kennedy slayings in ’68, “There was an almost touching national
revulsion against our own gun culture, and for once the protesting correspondence on the subject
reaching senators and representatives outweighed letters stirred up by the extraordinarily efficient lobby
of the National Rifle Association.”
But the soul-searching soon withered.
Alas, Hofstadter wrote, “It seems clear now that the strategic moment for gun controls has passed and
that the United States will continue to endure an armed populace…A nation that could not devise a
system on gun control after its experiences of the 1960s, and at a moment of profound popular revulsion
against guns, is not likely to get such a system in the calculable future. One must wonder how grave a
domestic gun catastrophe would have to be in order to persuade us. How far must things go?”
The main points in Hofstadter’s jeremiad have become familiar in the decades since he wrote the piece:
that common sense dictates the need for control of access to guns, particularly handguns, in modern
society.
Why, this camp wonders, does America make it so easy for every nut with a chip on his shoulder to go
out in a muzzle-flashing, news-making blaze?
The 1980s brought fresh examples for the gun control portfolio: the wounding of President Reagan in
1981 by a deranged gunman; the murder of 21 at a San Diego fast-food shop by a disaffected security
guard armed with an Uzi; the 1986 “going postal” rampage in Oklahoma when a Postal Service employee
killed 14 colleagues and himself, and the 1989 shooting at a Stockton, Calif., schoolyard by a disturbed
drifter with an assault rifle that left five kids dead and 30 wounded.
The following decade provided more stinging examples. In 1991 a suicidal man drove his truck into a
cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and began shooting, killing 24 and wounding 20. And in April 1999, two
alienated teenagers went on a suicidal rampage at Columbine High School near Denver, killing 13 and
wounding 24.
The Killeen killing was an American firearms-murder record until April 16, 2007—the day that yet another
disaffected man killed 32 and wounded 61 at Virginia Tech University.

Chapter 12
Covering Domestic Violence
By Sarah Huntley
Introduction
For years, the issue of domestic violence has posed a host of thorny questions for law enforcement and
the news media alike.
Among them:
• Faced with recanting victims and disbelieving relatives, whom do you believe?
• How do you break – or help others understand - the pervasive cycle that defines a violent
relationship?
• Does the public care about family violence? And how many resources are worth allocating if
these crimes aren’t random?
Victims’ advocates and women’s rights activists joined forces in the 1980s, determined to improve the
way law enforcement, the government, and the public approached domestic violence. The resulting
movement has made considerable strides. Police are less likely to look the other way or treat the issue as
a simple “family matter.” The civil and criminal courts systems have designed sometimes elaborate
processes and imposed specific requirements for addressing these kinds of offenses. And shelters have
cropped up in most communities in America, offering opportunities – with varying success - to victims who
want a new and safer life.
Nonetheless, even today, as decisions are made in newsrooms about which stories to cover and how to
play them, it isn’t uncommon to hear someone say “it’s just a domestic.”
So why is it an issue worth exploring?
Consider these numbers:
• Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted in the United States
each year by someone who claims to love them, according to a study by the Department of
Justice.
• In 2001, 20 percent of non-fatal violent crime against women was committed by an intimate
partner, according to another Justice Department report.
• One in 4 women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime, says a study by the
National Center for Victims of Crime.
If the statistics aren’t enough to grab readers (or your editor), consider some of the challenges domestic
violence presents:
• Recidivism: Repeat offenders continue to confound law enforcement. Because of varying

methods of tracking repeat offenders, valid statistics can be hard to come by, and comparing
them from state to state is perilous. But many law enforcement agencies attempt to tally the
number of people arrested and some have systems for calculating whether the same person has
been arrested more than once. In Colorado, that responsibility falls to the Colorado Bureau of
Investigation. Between 1994 and 2005, 84,431 people were arrested in the Rocky Mountain state
on charges associated with domestic violence. Of those, more than 50,000 – nearly 60 percent –
were arrested on domestic violence charges more than once.

• Resources: Courts and police departments across the country often struggle to keep up. In
Denver, home to nearly 555,000, police log an average of 50 domestic violence calls a day.
Informational and crisis hotlines, usually run by advocacy groups, receive additional inquiries and
complaints, many of which never come to the attention of law enforcement.
• Costs: Advocates point to an extraordinary economic impact. The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control estimates a yearly price tag of $5.8 billion in health care expenses, reduced productivity
in the workplace, and lost earnings. The figure jumps even more dramatically in studies that have
attempted to include the costs of the criminal justice system’s response.
Finally, if you go beyond the statistics and the challenges to law enforcement, you’ll find the makings of
journalism at its most compelling. These are stories about people: men, women and children of all races,
ages and sexual preferences at all socioeconomic levels. Many have been caught up in dynamics they –
and those around them – struggle to understand.
What is domestic violence?
Defining domestic violence is key to shaping your coverage.
Despite the characterizations of some family members and many media outlets, domestic violence is not
simply a matter of someone “snapping.” Violence between partners is rarely an isolated incident. In most
cases, it follows an escalating pattern that centers on issues of power and control.
The control can be physical: keeping someone from leaving the house or monitoring their movements and
free time, for example. But it can also be emotional. Abusers often work to lower their victim’s self-
esteem, cut their ties to family and friends and keep close tabs on income and spending.
The legal definition of domestic violence is significant because in many cases, it dictates society’s
response to the problem. That definition can vary. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic
Violence, “Most states require the perpetrator and the victim to be current or former spouses, currently or
formerly reside together, or have a child in common. A significant number of states include current or
former dating relationships in domestic violence laws.”
The Worst Case

Nearly every community has them: Cases that shock the public, capture headlines for days, and in the
best case scenarios, galvanize the community to take action. The violence in these is almost always
deadly.
Statistics suggest both fatal and non-fatal cases are on the decline. A 2006 U.S. Department of Justice
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report shows the number of women killed by their partners in 2005 was
1,181, down almost 26 percent when compared to 1976. Male victims have fared even better. The
domestic homicide rate for men dropped by 75 percent over the same 29-year period. At first glance, the
statistics for what the government calls “nonlethal” cases also appear to be encouraging. Female victims
of non-fatal domestic violence numbered 876,340 in 1998. In 1993 – just five years earlier – 1.1 million
women reported they had been victims of non-fatal domestic violence, according to another BJS study.
That is a 20 percent reduction.
Amid these numbers, however, is a sobering reality: violent crime in America was dropping during the
same time – and it declined at a much faster pace than the reductions in domestic violence. In 2005, the
rate of reported violent crime in the United States was 21 per 1,000 people over the age of 12. In 1976,
the rate was 48 per 1,000 over the age of 12. If domestic violence had kept pace with violent crime in
general, advocates should have seen decreases of more than 56 percent. Women continue to face tough
odds. In recent years, as many as a one-third of all women killed in America died in what was supposed
to be a loving relationship, according to a 2006 BJS study. White girlfriends, in particular, are

experiencing a growing danger. Despite the strides of the past decades, more of them died at the hands
of a partner in 2005 than in 1976, according to the report.

Chapter 13
Covering Prisons and Jails
By Jenifer Warren
Introduction
"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

-Fyodor Dostoevsky
A century and a half has passed since Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested by the Tsarist
police and locked away with other political activists in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. His
confinement there, and in a Siberian labor camp, gave his later fiction a decidedly darker feel, complete
with tormented characters and existentialist themes.
Today’s American prisons, with their electrified fences, “super-max” cells and racially segregated yards,
bear little physical resemblance to the lock-ups of Dostoevsky’s time. But his famous observation remains
a compelling invitation for journalists. The prison beat is incomparably rich turf, a hair-raising intersection
of human drama, politics, money, conflict, and power that promises good tales aplenty.
Prying those stories loose from a subculture that remains quasi-militaristic, despite a wave of new
correctional thinking and leadership, is only one challenge posed by the beat. Reporters covering
corrections also may face apathy or outright hostility from readers, a lack of support and interest from
editors, difficulty gaining the trust of sources and depression spawned by immersion in so much human
misery.
Overlaying it all is the sometimes tricky task of gaining access to prisoners and their jailers. As former
California Corrections Secretary Roderick Q. Hickman once told the Los Angeles Times, “We become
very good at keeping inmates from getting out of prison, but we’re not very good at letting the rest of the
world in.”
For the most part, that’s just fine with the rest of the world. By definition, prisoners have been convicted of
a crime, and for many people, that’s enough information, regardless of whether the crime was a
nonviolent drug offense or a brutal assault, or whether they contend that their conviction was wrongful.
When I first began covering corrections for the Los Angeles Times in the mid-1990s, the public response
to many of my stories—arriving in angry letters asserting that all inmates were incorrigible animals who
should rot in hell—caught me off guard. Even some friends, when they learned about my new beat, would
raise an eyebrow, or suggest that writing about “thugs” was an unworthy investment of my time. I’ll never
forget the words of one former acquaintance who was pleased by the local prison’s role in sorting her
community’s recyclables: “I love the idea of prisoners picking through my trash,” she said.
Other critics complain that prison reporters make celebrities out of infamous criminals. Crime-victim
advocates, in particular, say that stories detailing the fate of incarcerated convicts glorify the guilty while
further traumatizing those upon whom they have preyed.
In some states, such sentiments have led to laws restricting media access to inmates, making it
increasingly difficult for reporters to obtain one-on-one interviews. In the mid-1990s, California adopted
such a policy, ending the ability of journalists to contact a specific inmate and arrange an in-prison
interview. Instead, reporters were told they could schedule a general tour and interview only those
prisoners they happened to encounter. Obviously, the odds of running into the lone inmate whose story
you want to tell are very low, so reporters are now forced to use more cumbersome and time-consuming
means to arrange contact. Typically, this means obtaining permission to join an inmate’s official visitors’
list and arranging a meeting through extended postal mail exchanges.

While such logistical hassles are frustrating, and are often designed to restrict the flow of information out
of prisons, journalists should be ever mindful of the impact their reporting may have on survivors of crime.
Helpful tips are available from the National Organization for Victim Assistance (www.trynova.org)
the National Center for Victims of Crime (www.ncvc.org), and other groups.
The truth is, however, that the corrections beat today is about far more than celebrity bad guys—or about
riots, abuse of force and overcrowding, three other staples of the past.
Over the last 30 years, America’s incarceration boom has produced a complex, far-flung and increasingly
expensive correctional system wracked with problems, and brimming with potential for the enterprising
journalist. In 2008, the Pew Center on the States reported that 1 in 100 American adults was behind bars,
and federal and state spending on prisons topped $49 billion—four times the amount spent 20 years
earlier. Amazingly, 13 states now spend more than $1 billion annually on their correctional systems, led
by the granddaddy of them all, California, where annual spending exceeds $10 billion.
Clearly, the numbers alone make the correctional system a topic that demands serious attention
by the media—especially after the 2008 national economic crisis, when states are coping with
extraordinary budget deficits compelling cuts to all manner of vital public programs.
The fiscal impact of prisons is only one piece of the evolving story. Other elements ripe for exploration
include an inmate population that is aging and increasingly sick; private prisons that are multiplying and
adding a new dimension to the industry; prison gangs that continue to defy containment efforts;
discouraging recidivism rates that are raising fresh questions about the nation’s fundamental correctional
approach; and the increasing use of electronic monitoring and other technological tools to supervise
offenders in the community.
Capital punishment, too, remains an ever controversial topic, especially given the rising number of
wrongful convictions exposed through DNA testing. The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic,
reports that since 1989, there have been 232 post-conviction DNA exonerations, says the New York-
based Innocence Project. The average time served by the exonerees was 12 years. Of the 232 people
freed, 17 had served time on death row.
Perhaps most fundamentally, strong coverage of corrections is important because prisons represent the
power of the state over the individual. Journalists have an obligation to act as a check against that power,
while making sure they don’t get taken in by the cons.
It all adds up to an irresistible, combustible mix—and, as Dostoevsky suggested so long ago, a beat that
can beam back an important reflection of the society we have become.

Chapter 14
Covering Sentencing
By Ted Gest
Introduction
“The maximum sentence: 100 years in prison without parole.” That phrase in a recent news story about a
murder case illustrates one major issue in reporting on criminal sentencing. While the phrase may be
technically accurate, it reflects the view of a prosecutor, who may want to convey to the public the most
serious possible description of a crime.
But the description is fundamentally misleading, because no one will serve 100 years behind bars, and
almost no defendants receive the maximum penalty in any case.
One result of exposure to scores of such references in news stories over the years is that the public may
develop a jaundiced view of the justice system, believing that lawbreakers rarely receive the sanctions
they deserve.
To report in proper context, journalists should understand how sentencing practices in the United States
have evolved and how they actually work in today’s crowded court systems.
Understanding the Sentencing Process
There is no national system of sentencing. The federal government and each state maintain their own
rules, and criminal courts may operate very differently depending on where they are. Defendants accused
of identical crimes in neighboring states may end up with vastly different penalties because of varying
state laws and prosecutorial practices. This chapter provides an overall view of sentencing in the U.S.,
but journalists must familiarize themselves with the laws of their state or jurisdiction.
Reporters should keep in mind that the criminal justice system “is nothing more than the sum total of
discretionary decisions by innumerable officials,” as criminologistSamuel Walker of the University of
Nebraska at Omaha puts it. From police officers to prosecutors to judges to corrections department
officials, government authorities have considerable leeway in deciding how to treat those suspected of
committing crimes.
Journalists should be aware that the sentencing stage is only one step in a long series of decision
points in the justice process, and what a judge may say in court rarely is the final word on a
defendant’s fate.
From Fixed to Flexible Penalties
In the nation’s early history, crimes tended to be associated with specific penalties fixed by law.In 1870,
the National Prison Association (now the American Correctional Association, www.aca.org) concluded
that the practice did not give convicts much incentive to improve. The concept of indeterminate sentences
is usually credited to Zebulon Brockway, a prison warden in New York State and later Detroit, who was a
pioneer in inmate rehabilitation.
The prison association declared that “preemptory sentences ought to be replaced by those of
indeterminate length.” Under this concept, which became common nationwide over the ensuing century, a
parole board typically would decide on the actual length of time served behind bars depending on “its
judgment of whether the prisoner had been reformed or cured or had simply served enough time,”
according to a historical accountprepared for the U.S. Department of Justice in 1996. “Under

indeterminate sentencing, the sentence was individualized so that the punishment fit the criminal rather
than the crime.”
A robber, for example, might be eligible under an indeterminate sentencing law for any prison sentence
between five and 20 years, and might actually receive a sentence of five to eight years. A parole board or
some other correctional authority would decide on that convict’s actual release date based on several
factors, primarily his behavior record and presumed fitness to live successfully on the outside.
Indeterminate sentencing was widely used during an era when prison populations were relatively low. The
national total was under 100,000 in the 1960s, less than one-tenth of what it grew to in the four decades
that followed. With crime largely out of the national spotlight, indeterminate sentencing and parole were
“part of the process of making criminal justice better suited to the individual case,” wrote
historian Lawrence M. Friedman in Crime and Punishment in American History. (*see Appendix C for
details.)
When crime rates started to rise sharply in the 1960s, policy makers began to look for reasons for the
increase and for ways to control crime. The criticism spanned the ideological spectrum.
One of the many apparent culprits was sentencing. Analysts cited widespread disparities among
penalties, a lack of predictability into what sanctions defendants would get, and disparities in how much
time behind bars would be served
When a chronic offender was re-arrested, critics tended to blame the officials who released him and the
laws that authorized them to do so.
Another line of attack came from experts like federal judge Marvin Frankel, whose 1972 book, Criminal
Sentences: Law Without Order (*see Appendix C) argued that it was unjust to put all sentencing power
over a defendant into the hands of one judge. One big-city jurist recalls that when he and his colleagues
attending a retreat were given details of a hypothetical case and were asked what sentence they would
impose, the answers ranged from probation to a long prison term. Clearly, there was an inequity problem.
As a result of these and other criticisms, the U.S. “underwent a wholesale shift in sentencing philosophy”
in the 1970s, says sentencing scholar Sandra Shane-DuBow, former director of Wisconsin’s state
sentencing commission.
The new ways of sentencing in America took many different forms. More than a dozen states moved to
“determinate” sentencing laws that specified penalties for certain offenses. Most states went further by
adopting “mandatory minimum” sentences for some offenses, meaning that a defendant was required to
serve at least a certain amount of time behind bars before release. This was intended to eliminate
sanctions that were too lenient.

Chapter 15
Covering Community Corrections: Probation, Parole and Beyond
By Jenifer Warren
Introduction
When most people think about corrections in America, they picture high-security prisons encircled with
electric fencing, or jails teeming with inmates watched by uniformed guards. At last count, the nation
housed 2.3 million people in its sprawling network of federal, state and local lock-ups. That means 1 in
100 adults is behind bars, an incarceration rate vastly exceeding that of any other country, the Public
Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States reported in 2008.
Such statistics are startling. But a far greater number of supervised offenders— more than two-thirds—
are not behind bars. Instead, they live among the rest of us in the community, either on parole, probation,
house arrest or under some other form of correctional watch. During the past quarter century, the number
of offenders under correctional supervision in the community has skyrocketed, and now totals a
staggering 5.1 million.
All the attention paid to long sentences like “three strikes and you’re out” life terms have masked the
reality that most inmates serve relatively short stints in custody; the average length of stay was about 2 ½
years as of 2003, said a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report in 2007. That means that more than
700,000 people are released each year, many of them into the strained community supervision system.
Despite such high numbers, the vast array of programs and neighborhood-based sanctions
collectively described as “community corrections” has received comparatively little coverage by
the news media.
With federal and state budgets badly strained by the reeling economy starting in 2008, lawmakers are
scrambling to cut correctional costs that ballooned during a two-decade build-up of the incarcerated
population. Their quest is putting a new focus on community corrections, an alternative that costs
dramatically less than housing offenders under 24-hour guard behind bars.
On average, prisons cost state governments about $79 per inmate, per day—or $29,000 per year. In
contrast, supervising offenders on probation runs as low as $1.38 per day in Mississippi. Parole
supervision costs a bit more, but still tops out at only $13.28 per day in Colorado, statistics collected by
the Pew Center on the States for a 2009 report on probation and parole show. Layering drug treatment,
job training or electronic monitoring on top of such supervision increases the cost, but not so high as the
price of round-the-clock incarceration. Moreover, offenders in many states are now required to pay a
portion of their community supervision costs, as well as paying restitution to victims.
For journalists, the expanding interest in community supervision creates an opportunity to explore a
corner of the correctional world that has been overshadowed—even neglected—for years. So far, much
of the coverage has focused on ex-convicts who committed serious crimes while on probation or parole,
or the released sex offender who stirred an uproar by moving into a peaceful residential neighborhood.
Crimes by those under supervision is a legitimate subject for coverage, but reporters have devoted
surprisingly little sustained attention to the management of the millions of offenders who ride our buses,
shop in our grocery stores, walk our park trails, and live right in our midst. Even less journalistic effort has
been invested in assessing the effectiveness of community corrections programs and the science that
underlies them.
Simply defined, community corrections refers to a range of alternative punishments for offenders, often
those convicted of property and drug offenses.

The centerpiece of supervision is probation and parole. But also under the community corrections
umbrella are drug courts and residential drug treatment facilities, home detention with electronic
monitoring, day reporting centers and other options. In some instances, programs are used on the “front-
end” of the criminal justice system – to divert convicts away from prison or jail onto probation and into a
community-based setting offering rehabilitation services.
In other cases, judges use halfway houses or other facilities as a “back-end” or post-custody alternative
for parolees who need assistance, treatment or extra monitoring upon release from prison.
In recent years, community corrections options have proliferated dramatically, especially since prison
overcrowding starting in the late 1980s spurred new interest in alternative sanctions. While the number of
offenders under correctional watch in the community has soared, sufficient funding has rarely followed.
The result: probation and parole agencies often lack the resources they need to monitor convicts
effectively, let alone ensure they receive quality drug treatment, mental health care, job training or other
services to reduce the odds they will reoffend.
On March 12, 1999, University of Pennsylvania political scientist John J. DiIuliosummed up the state of
affairs this way when he wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “Currently we spend next to nothing on
community corrections. We get what we pay for.”
More than a decade later, not much has changed.
The new economic pressures ravaging state and local governments are only exacerbating this reality,
creating a wealth of potential stories for reporters on the changing correctional landscape. Journalists
also can find a bonanza of stories in the emergence of “techno-corrections”—the brave new world of
devices and techniques that allow ever more intensive surveillance of offenders. From ignition interlocks
to sophisticated, real-time GPS satellite monitoring, government has an expanding box of tools to track
paroled sex offenders, gang members and others on the streets.
The advancing science of risk assessment—or determining whether an offender’s characteristics and
history make him or her suitable for community supervision and, if so, what sort of programs best fit the
needs—is also a natural target for investigation by the press.
Corrections agencies love to toss out figures showing how a pet program reduces recidivism, claims that
often coincide with requests for additional funding from the Legislature. Journalists should beware of such
reports, and never take them at face value. What do the data really say? Did the study include a control
group? And how strong is the science behind it? Experts say that any program that claims to have
reduced recidivism by more than 10 to 15 percent is suspect. Community corrections is an evolving and
expanding field that is ripe for scrutiny by industrious journalists. And when it comes to public safety, no
other piece of the nation’s byzantine correctional system matters more.

11-02-28 Criminal Justice Journalists: Covering Crime and Justice

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Covering

Written and edited by

1 Covering Crime and Justice

2 Covering Crime and Justice

3 Covering Crime and Justice

Crime reporters often are the busiest journalists in any newsroom.

Small-town reporters face other special challenges, as well.

4 Covering Crime and Justice

5 Covering Crime and Justice

6 Covering Crime and Justice

7 Covering Crime and Justice

8 Covering Crime and Justice

The Drug War's Rising Costs

9 Covering Crime and Justice

Race, Crime and Poverty

10 Covering Crime and Justice

Are Blacks Over-Arrested for Drug Violations?

11 Covering Crime and Justice

12 Covering Crime and Justice

13 Covering Crime and Justice

14 Covering Crime and Justice

• Be honest and fair.

• Do we intrude on grief when we pursue the loved ones of crime victims?

15 Covering Crime and Justice

• Be wary of treating people as a means to an end.

Ethics and Integrity

The Times guidelines include these points:

16 Covering Crime and Justice

17 Covering Crime and Justice

18 Covering Crime and Justice

19 Covering Crime and Justice

--Suppression: There may be motions challenging a confession or inculpatory statement—an admission

20 Covering Crime and Justice

From Personal Injuries To Patents

21 Covering Crime and Justice

From Frivolous To Historic

22 Covering Crime and Justice

How Federal Prosecutors Differ

23 Covering Crime and Justice

24 Covering Crime and Justice

I may have been obsessive.

This backgrounder should help, as well.

I hope reporters and editors find the information useful.

The American Gun Conundrum

25 Covering Crime and Justice

But the soul-searching soon withered.

26 Covering Crime and Justice

So why is it an issue worth exploring?

Consider these numbers:

• Recidivism: Repeat offenders continue to confound law enforcement. Because of varying

27 Covering Crime and Justice

What is domestic violence?

Defining domestic violence is key to shaping your coverage.

The Worst Case

28 Covering Crime and Justice

29 Covering Crime and Justice

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

30 Covering Crime and Justice

31 Covering Crime and Justice

Understanding the Sentencing Process

From Fixed to Flexible Penalties

32 Covering Crime and Justice

33 Covering Crime and Justice