A joint investigation by the Chicago Tribune and journalism students at Columbia College Chicago casts doubts on a 2004 Chicago police shooting in which the officers were cleared just 10 hours after seriously wounding a man and a 13-year-old girl. Students dissected the crime scene and discovered that one of the shooters couldn’t have possibly seen what he claimed to see.

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KPCC.org, the Web site for Southern California Public Radio, investigated allegations of inmate mistreatment at the California Institution for Men in Chino following a bloody 11-hour riot Aug. 8, 2009. The riot left some 200 men injured. It took authorities until sunrise to contain the violence. In interviews and in letters obtained by KPCC, inmates complained of being kept outdoors in punishing heat and the freezing overnight cold for up to four days after the riot. Other inmates say they were held under similar conditions months before the riot. Others claim the prison continues to house prisoners in unsanitary, unsafe conditions in order to deal with a dramatic shortage of bed space. During the reporting of this project, questions raised by Cuevas, about inmates being repeatedly held outdoors for long stretches, prompted a new investigation by the state Office of the Inspector General. Authorities are now looking at how and where the prison bunked inmates before and after the riot.

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A six-month investigation by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette attempts to document the story of Carmeletta Green, a 12-year-old who disappeared from her home 27 years ago.  Police and court documents were reviewed and 38 people interviewed to piece together the story.  Remains found in 1991 were finally identified as Carmeletta Green Nov. 30, 2009.  Her case is now being pursued as a homicide.

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A series by The Kansas City Star explores the problem of human trafficking, and how the U.S. is failing in its promise to end trafficking and other human rights abuses.  Their investigation “found that, in spite of all the rhetoric from the Bush and Obama administrations, the United States is failing to find and help tens of thousands of human trafficking victims in America.”  The investigation also found that the Kansas City area has emerged as a hub for human trafficking.  36 alleged traffickers have been prosecuted in western Missouri in the past three years — more than anywhere else in the U.S.

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A nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity looks at sexual assaults on college campuses. “According to a report funded by the Department of Justice, roughly one in five women who attend college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. But official data from the schools themselves doesn’t begin to reflect the scope of the problem.”

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Mike Chalmers of The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., found a pattern of “denial and delay” among administrative law judges who have the power to grant or deny Social Security benefits to disabled workers in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. The News Journal “analyzed four years of decisions by ALJ in every state, more than 1.7 million records that show a huge disparity in how disability cases are decided by hearing office and region.” The Social Security Administration refused to release information on complaints filed against the judges.

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An investigation by Times Herald-Record reporter Christine Young into the questionable handling by police and prosecutors of a 1987 New York City murder has led to the prison release of a man convicted of the crime. Lebrew Jones, who spent 22 years behind bars for a crime he maintained he did not commit, has been released on parole. Jones - with an IQ of 66 and described by psychologists as “suggestible” - was released on his first eligible chance. That early release, described as “basically unheard of,” was due to Young’s reporting, Jones’ lawyers said.

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A Columbus Dispatch investigation of domestic violence by Stephanie Czekalinski, Jill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner shows flaws in Ohio laws and policies that create a culture of tolerance and indifference about the top crime in the state. Among the findings in the four-day series are that animals receive more protections than people, restraining orders for victims of domestic violence are flimsy protection at best, and the legal system allows repeat offenders to walk away from charges with little, if any, punishment, despite long histories of battering. Other members of the Dispatch Printing Company also produced stories on the topic this week including WBNS 10 TV, Ohio News Network, ThisWeek community newspapers, and Fronteras de la Noticia, a Spanish-language weekly.

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A report by Sandy Hodson of The Augusta Chronicle shows that private probation companies profit while unfairly punishing those who cannot pay their court debts. “Someone who can afford to pay off fines assessed for traffic and other misdemeanor offenses can usually walk out of court a free person. Anyone who can’t pay might find himself entangled in the system with a financial debt that keeps growing as he faces the prospect of either paying the court or going to jail.”

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Stephen Stock of WFOR-Miami reports that South Florida has become the epicenter of medicare fraud, a problem that is costing taxpayers $60 billion annually.  “And federal investigators say that Little Havana and other areas around Miami-Dade County have become the Medicare fraud capital of the world.”

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