Tuesday, February 21, 2012 09:33
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy led a blue-ribbon list of speakers from the White House, leading police departments, think tanks, and universities for two days of discussions and briefings at the 7th Annual Harry Frank. Guggenheim foundation Symposium on Crime in America, on Feb. 6th and 7th, 2012 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Twenty journalists from around the nation joined participants from the criminal justice community to explore his year's topic,""The Problem That Won't Go Away: How Drugs, Race and Mass Incarceration Have Distorted American Justice (and What To Do About It)." There were six public panels, with 27 speakers, For an agenda of the conference, see HERE.
The journalism fellows (see list here) proposed reporting projects centered around the conference theme.
In addition to the main theme, the Symposium examined some of the newest and most innovative developments in the areas of prisoner re-entry and early release, and recent US and New Jersey Supreme Court rulings on eyewitness identification.
Symposium highlights: Risco Mention-Lewis, Assistant District Attorney from Nassau County, and Shelia Rule, founder of Think Outside the Cell Foundation, addressed : "After Prison What? Breaking the Mold on Prisoner Reentry." Some of the nation's leading corrections chiefs, including Matthew Cate, Secretary of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and New York State Corrections chief Brian Fischer came together for a candid conversation about the state of the nation's prison systems and the impact of early release legislation.
William Black, a former top government regulator, discussed the notorious lack of prosecutions and convictions on fraud and white collar crime arising from the economic crisis. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and leading civil rights attorney Connie Rice spoke about the challenge of tackling juvenile gangs and violence.
Dr. Khalil Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Benjamin Tucker, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy provided a perspective on America's long-running "war on drugs."
On this page you will be able to download podcasts of the panels and keynote addresses, explore some of the research material provided to participants at the Symposium, and see articles written by this year's Reporting Fellows as well as conference coverage. It will be updated as new material becomes available.
Please check it out regularly!
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012 12:27
Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones magazine are the winners of the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Awards.
Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones magazine won the 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (single-story category) for his investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 15,000 nationwide informants charged with spying on Muslim-American communities.
Read the Mother Jones magazine story,"The Informants" here.
Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won the 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (series category) for "Both Sides of the Law," a multi-part series about lawbreakers on the Milwaukee police force. During an investigation that spanned over two years, Barton identified 93 officers on the force—from street cop to captain—who had been disciplined by the department for violating the laws and ordinances they were sworn to uphold.
Read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story,"Both Sides of the Law" here.
Runner-up in the single-entry category was awarded to Kelly Virella of City Limits Investigates for "Behind Bars: Love, Sex, Rape and New York's Women Prisoners," which investigated intimacy between prisoners and correction officers in New York State. Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle of the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau, were runners-up in the series category for "Military Injustice," which revealed troubling flaws in the military justice system.
Read the City Limits Investigates "Behind Bars: Love, Sex, Rape and New York's Women Prisoners" story here.
Read the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau story "Military Injustice," here.
The prize recipients were recognized at a special dinner in their honor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Feb 6,2012, hosted by college president Jeremy Travis. Former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, now at Yale University, delivered keynote remarks.
Jurors for the John Jay Prize for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting are Ted Gest, President, Criminal Justice Journalists; Joe Domanick, Associate Director, Center on Media, Crime and Justice; Alexa Capeloto, Associate Professor, Journalism, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Mansfield Frazier, Columnist, The Crime Report; and Jordan Smith, Reporter, Austin Chronicle.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 10:25
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Mother Jones Magazine Win 2012 John Jay College/H.F. Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Awards
New York, NY, January 17, 2012 – Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, today announced that Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones magazine are the winners of the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Awards.
“The Mother Jones and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stories were very impressive pieces of investigative journalism that drew attention to issues of critical importance in criminal justice," said President Travis. “We are proud to recognize the winners’ contributions to the national dialogue on these issues.”
The awards presentation will take place on February 6th at an awards dinner in New York City, held in conjunction with the 7th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium: The Problem That Won't Go Away: How Drugs, Race and Politics Distort US Criminal Justice, hosted by John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice (CMCJ).
Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones magazine won the 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (single-story category) for his investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 15,000 nationwide informants charged with spying on Muslim-American communities. During a one–year reporting journey in partnership with Lowell Bergman’s Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, Aaronson found that the FBI is infiltrating Muslim communities and drawing people into “terrorist plots” that are actually conceived and financed by the FBI. The previously unreported story received national attention.
One of our judges said the Mother Jones investigation "helps renew my faith in the future of investigative journalism." The judge called it "a critically serious subject packaged and presented as a smooth, suspenseful read—I hope we see more partnerships like the one that yielded this.”
Read the Mother Jones story here.
Runner-up for the single story category was awarded to Kelly Virella of City Limits Investigates for “Behind Bars: Love, Sex, Rape and New York's Women Prisoners,” which investigated intimacy between prisoners and correction officers in New York State.
Read the City Limits Investigates story here.
Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won the 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (series category) for "Both Sides of the Law," a multi-part series about lawbreakers on the Milwaukee police force. During an investigation that spanned over two years, Barton found that 93 officers on the force—from street cop to captain—had been disciplined by the department for violating the laws and ordinances they were sworn to uphold.
Read the Journal Sentinel story here.
Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle of the McClatchy Newspapers Washington DC bureau, were runners-up in the series category for "Military Injustice," which revealed troubling flaws in the military justice system.
Read the McClatchy Newspapers story here.
“We’re proud once again to honor the best in criminal justice reporting this year,” said CMCJ Director Stephen Handelman. “The impressive variety of entries submitted to our judges underline the continuing importance of journalism’s watchdog role in a fast-changing and complex criminal justice system.”
This year’s Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Awards, presented annually by the John Jay College Center on Media, Crime and Justice, recognizes work published between November 2010 and October 2011. Established to honor journalists whose reporting informs and enhances the public’s understanding of issues related to crime in America, the awards are open to U.S.-based print and online journalists. The prize comes with a cash award of $1,000 in each category and a plaque. Runners-up receive a certificate of Honorable Mention.
The distinguished panel of five judges for the 2012 awards included: Alexa Capeloto, assistant professor of journalism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former Enterprise Editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune; Joe Domanick, veteran Los Angeles-based crime author and reporter and associate director at the CMCJ; Ted Gest, president, Criminal Justice Journalists; Jordan Smith, reporter for the Austin Chronicle and 2009 John Jay Prize Winner; and Mansfield Frazier, a contributing columnist for The Crime Report, Newsweek/Daily Beast and Cool Cleveland.
The award is supported by a grant from the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, a private grant-making foundation that aims to shape and support research on violence, aggression, and dominance. The winning entries will be posted on the John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice web site, http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/cmcj/.
About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu.
The Center on Media, Crime and Justice, established at John Jay College in 2006, is the nation's only practice- and research-oriented think tank devoted to encouraging and developing high-quality reporting on criminal justice, and to promoting better-informed public debate on the complex 21st century challenges of law enforcement, public security and justice in a globalized urban society. For more information, visit http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/cmcj or www.thecrimereport.org
The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation sponsors scholarly research on problems of violence, aggression, and dominance. The foundation provides both research grants to established scholars and dissertation fellowships to graduate students during the dissertation-writing year. For more information, visit http://www.hfg.org.
For More Information, Call
Doreen Vinas, 212.237.8645
Cara Tabachnick, 212-484-1175
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Monday, September 12, 2011 01:01
7th Annual John Jay/ H. F. Guggenheim Prize for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting
Competition is now open for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice/Harry Frank Guggenheim prizes for the best reporting on crime and justice published in U.S. newspapers, magazines or online. The $1,000 annual awards, sponsored by the nation’s pre-eminent academic institution on criminal justice, honor investigative, feature and enterprise journalism that has had a significant impact on public understanding during the year. The Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting is administered by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay, and judged by a panel of leading journalists and educators. Prizewinners are announced after Jan 1, 2012 and will be entitled to an all-expense paid trip to New York to accept the awards at the annual prize dinner in February, 2012. To be eligible for the prize, work must be published in the U.S. between November 1, 2010 and October 31, 2011. All entries must be submitted online in MS Word or PDF file format ONLY.
Deadline: November 9, 2011 11:59 p.m. ET
The special John Jay/H.F. Guggenheim prize for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting was established to honor journalists whose reporting informs and enhances the public’s understanding of issues related to crime in America. Support for the prize comes from the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation, a private operating and grant-making foundation that aims to shape support research on violence, aggression, and dominance. The foundation provides both research grants to established scholars and dissertation fellowships to graduate students during the dissertation writing year. For more information, visit http://www.hfg.org/.
The Prize winning entries will be posted on the John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice web site,www.jjay.cuny.edu/cmcj after January 1, 2012.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching, scholarship and research, its faculty are the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu.
The Center on Media, Crime and Justice, housed at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) since 2006, is the nation's only practice- and research-oriented think tank devoted to encouraging and developing high-quality reporting on criminal justice, and to promoting better-informed public debate on the complex 21st-century challenges of law enforcement, public security and justice in a globalized urban society. For more information, visit http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/cmcj.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 12:13
An article on Rikers Island High School in The Crime Report was awarded first place in online writing in the 2011 National Federation of Press Women awards. The article, published July 15, 2010, explored whether America's first high school at a correctional facility, the Austin H. MacCormick Island Academy, located at New York’s Rikers Island jail, has fulfilled its promise to offer young offenders a second chance to go straight.
See list of award winners here.
The article, "Can a Prison Education Turn Someone Inside Out?," by Lion Calandra, a former NY Daily News editorial writer, was her reporting project for the 2010 John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship. Read her article here. The author, Lion also wrote an accompanying "Reporters Notebook" for the piece, detailing how journalists could follow up her story. Read her Reporters Notebook here.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011 04:48
Some of the country's foremost experts, organizations and academics working on gun violence issues are listed in this resource guide.
Access the guide here.
For more information on the topic click on "covering gun violence."
Read full entry »Monday, April 11, 2011 04:54
The deadline is 5 p.m. Fri., April 15 to apply for the 17th annual
Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism honoring distinguished coverage in
2010 of children, youth and families. First-place winners receive $1,000;
Categories include newspaper, video, magazine, audio, multimedia and
photojournalism. First-place winners will also be considered for the
America's Promise Journalism Awards for Awareness, which pay $5,000.
For more info, visit http://www.journalismcenter.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011 01:30
Crime Reporting Case Study Scripps Howard News Service "Murder Mysteries: Investigating America's Unsolved Homicides" (An Online Investigation)
Read full entry »Wednesday, April 06, 2011 11:31
A four-part series on the problem of illegal guns published in the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Press in December 2010 was awarded third place for investigative reporting by the Michigan AP Editorial Association.
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Wednesday, March 02, 2011 06:48
A special report prepared by Criminal Justice Journalists and the John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice.
Access Covering Criminal Justice (Sentencing, Corrections and Reentry) handbook here.
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