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2006-2007: ‘Removal, Incarceration, Reentry’
Fellows Meet at John Jay College
and USC Annenberg to Study Trends
Eight IJJ Fellows took part in the fall 2006 Criminal Justice Fellowship conference, which helped launch the new Center on the Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of The City University of New York.
The center is a partnership of John Jay College, USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism, Criminal Justice Journalists and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
In February 2007, the Fellows were joined by their editors or news directors at the second phase of the conference, conducted at IJJ’s facilities in Los Angeles.
The New York sessions of the conference, “The Politics and Consequences of Removal, Incarceration and Reentry Policies,” were held Nov. 27-Dec. 2. Scholars, criminal justice practitioners and other experts discussed the effects of incarceration and prisoner reentry practices on communities, the politics of crime-and-punishment policies, the influence of tougher laws, and the impact of U.S. incarceration policies on public health, families and society.
John Jay Prof. Todd Clear was among speakers at the opening panel, which addressed “Mass Removal and Its Impact on Inner City Communities.”
John Jay College President Jeremy Travis, author of “But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry,” spoke on a reentry panel exploring “What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Next?”
Newsweek columnist and author Ellis Cose moderated a panel on “The Black Underclass and America’s Criminal Justice System.” Panelists were Prof. Elijah Anderson, of the University of Pennsylvania; Connie Rice, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney and police abuse expert, and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Actor and humanitarian Harry Belafonte listened to the panel from the audience and later spoke about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s concern about urban youth.
At the February 2007 follow-up sessions in Los Angeles, the Fellows discussed their in-depth reporting projects with their editors, news directors and IJJ staff members.
The Los Angeles conference featured presentations by the president and vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association on “Prison Overcrowding and the Corrections Officer: A Line Officer’s View” and by Alan Mobley, a San Diego State professor who was a federal prisoner for more than a decade, on “A Basic Blueprint for Effective and Humane Prison and Parole Reform.”
The Fellows took part in a discussion with a Superior Court judge and representatives from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office and the Probation Department on “Overcoming Obstacles to Implementing Reentry Programs.”
These officials have been involved in discussions moderated by IJJ Senior Fellow Joe Domanick that have led to establishment of the Second Chance Women’s Reentry Court. This pilot program is designed as an alternative to sending woman on probation back to prison for violating parole or committing a new crime.
On the program’s final day, Domanick led the Fellows on a field trip to A New Way of Life Foundation, an organization in Watts that helps women make a positive reentry into the community after their release from prison.
Three of the 2006-2007 Criminal Justice Fellows came from newspapers, three from public radio and two from an online news operation. The Fellows are:
- Dan Gunderson, bureau chief for Minnesota Public Radio.
- Gilman Halsted, reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio.
- Colleen Mensching, staff writer for the Redlands (Calif.) Daily Facts.
- Hilda Muñoz, staff writer for The Hartford (Conn.) Courant.
- Julia Reynolds, staff writer for the Monterey County (Calif.) Herald.
- Harriet Ryan, senior special correspondent for CourtTVnews.com in New York City.
- Frank Stoltze, reporter for KPCC 89.3 FM in Los Angeles.
- Harry Swartz-Turfle, senior producer for CourtTVnews.com in New York City.
The criminal justice fellowship conference was led by Domanick, an award-winning journalist whose latest book is “Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State.” He is now working on a book, to be published by UC Press, on the crisis in California’s prison and parole systems.
Created with Ford Foundation funding, the Institute for Justice and Journalism was established at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication in 2000 to strengthen journalism about issues involving justice and injustice. IJJ is directed by Steve Montiel, a former reporter and president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
2004: ‘Crime and Punishment’
IJJ Fellows assess and write
about criminal justice issues
Criminal Justice Fellowships were awarded in 2004 to eight journalists committed to producing in-depth stories about “crime and punishment” issues such as mandatory minimum sentences, parole systems, the return of released prisoners to communities and incarceration policies and practices.
The Fellows spent a week (June 6-12, 2004) in Los Angeles with criminal justice experts, and returned to Los Angeles in the fall of 2004 to review and critique their journalistic projects with their editors and fellowship colleagues.
Among those experts were Jeanne Woodford, the director of the California Department of Corrections; Walter Dickey, professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and director of the Remington Law Center; Todd Clear, distinguished professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Steve Cooley, district attorney of Los Angeles County; Ted Gest, scholar and president of Criminal Justice Journalists, and Tom Hayden, activist and writer, who served 18 years in the California Legislature.
The fellowship was led by IJJ Senior Fellow Joe Domanick.
After completing his writing project for the Wisconsin State Journal, Fellow Phil Brinkman said, “I think the project has changed our approach to covering how the Legislature deals with crime. The expertise I’ve gained has made me a far more critical reporter in this area, and I’m less likely to let legislators or the governor get away with unsubstantiated claims about the effectiveness of proposed crime legislation.”
Commenting on the IJJ fellowship, Judi Villa of the Arizona Republic said: “The Justice and Journalism activities helped me connect with key sources and gave me a better overview of issues surrounding crime and punishment.”
Villa, whose project was titled “Adult Prisons Harden Teens,” also said: “Too often it seems that when I go to conferences, there doesn’t end up being a direct link to my beat, and it can be difficult to take something away that directly impacts my work. This fellowship was different. Everything was geared to stronger justice reporting, and I walked away with not only ideas for the future but also experts I could use now.”
2002: ‘America’s Wars on Drugs and Crime’
Journalists enhance expertise
in conference with 30 speakers
Eleven journalists from newspapers, radio and television received Criminal Justice Fellowships in 2002.
They met in Los Angeles in June 2002 for a weeklong conference, "America's Wars on Drugs and Crime, 1982-2002: What Worked? What Failed? What Next?” They participated in panel
discussions and seminars aimed at understanding how the criminal justice system works, how to write about it analytically and how to place issues in a contextual framework.
They heard more than 30 criminal justice experts and other guests talk about such issues as: "How Politics Shapes Crime
Policy," "The Origins and Evolution of the War on Drugs," "Sentencing, Incarceration and Alternatives" and "What
Journalists Should Know About Investigating and Assessing Police Performance."
Among the experts were Antonio Villaraigosa, the former speaker of the California Assembly and current Mayor of Los Angeles; Lee Baca, the sheriff of Los Angeles County; Barry Siegel, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Los Angeles Times, and Florence-Marie Cooper, a U.S. District Court Judge in the Central District based in Los Angeles.
Other speaker were Marc Mauer, author of “The Race to Incarcerate”; California Superior Court Judge Stephen V. Manley, a pioneering Drug Court judge; Vincent Schiraldi, president of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice; Bruce Shapiro, legal reporter for The Nation magazine; syndicated columnist Robert Scheer; Dan Lungren, U.S. congressman and former attorney general of California, and Connie Rice, civil rights attorney and co-director of Advancement Project Los Angeles.
In December of 2002, the Fellows reconvened in Los Angeles for sessions, led by Senior Fellow Joe Domanick, focusing on the selection and development of each individual’s project.
2001: ‘Covering Police in Times of Crisis’
Police chiefs and editors
discuss lessons learned
IJJ jump-started its fellowships through a three-day seminar, “Covering Police in Times of Crisis,” in December 2001, in partnership with the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the Vera Institute of Justice’s Police Assessment Resource Center.
The initial focus of the seminar, “covering police in diverse communities,” was expanded in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Police chiefs Bernard Parks of Los Angeles, Tom Streicher of Cincinnati and Gil Kerlikowske of Seattle were featured in a panel along with Janet Clayton, then editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, Ward Bushee, then editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, and Ken Bunting, then executive editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. They discussed lessons learned in media-police relations when each city experienced its own special crisis in recent years, ranging from race riots in Cincinnati to the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle and the issues involving corruption and police abuse in Los Angeles.
The rest of the three-day seminar explored police-community relations, tools of policing and their sociological implications, civil liberties versus domestic security, oversight of the police and a case study of the changes within the Los Angeles Police Department, concluding with a roundtable discussion with reporters who had done award-winning investigative stories about the LAPD.
Twenty-five journalists were awarded fellowships for this seminar, including a half dozen who became the first group of Institute for Justice and Journalism Fellows. The six institute’s Fellows returned to Los Angeles six months later for the opening conference of IJJ’s inaugural Criminal Justice Fellowships.
The six are Annie-Laurie Blair, assistant metro editor/criminal justice and Sunday metro editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer; Renee Ferguson, a general assignment and investigative reporter for WMAQ-TV, the NBC-owned station in Chicago; Lewis Kamb, a law enforcement reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Marianne McCune, a general assignment reporter for WNYC, a public radio station in New York City; Melissa Moore, a crime and law enforcement reporter for The Advocate of Baton Rouge, La.; and Lisa O’Neill Hill, a criminal justice reporter for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif.
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