The latest investigation from the New England Center for Investigation Reporting challenges the notion that race was a factor in the disorderly conduct arrest of Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is black, by a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer last year. “Instead, the analysis…finds that the most common factor linking people who [...]
Archive for the ‘Social issues’ Category
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Hawaii’s long-term-care system for elderly fraught with problems
April 1st, 2010 
Mark Horvit In a four-part series, Rob Perez of the Honolulu Advertiser found Hawaii’s long-term-care system for the elderly is fraught with problems, including a placement system tainted by kickbacks and fraud. He also found that Hawaii nursing homes are the least sanctioned in the country, that reforms at the state Legislature are consistently blocked by care-home [...]
Police under investigation for fatal shooting days after Katrina
February 16th, 2010 Beth Times-Picayune reporters Brendan McCarthy and Laura Maggi and ProPublica’s A.C. Thompson report that “a former New Orleans police officer is under investigation for shooting Henry Glover” four days after Hurricane Katrina.
Blacks three times more likely to be stopped in Toronto
February 9th, 2010 Beth Race Matters, a series by The Toronto Star, investigated why blacks are three times more likely than white to be stopped and questioned by police. “In each of the city’s 74 police patrol zones, the Star analysis shows that blacks were documented at significantly higher rates than their overall census population by zone, and that in many zones, the same holds true for “brown” people — mainly people of South Asian, Arab and West Asian backgrounds.”
San Diego County’s social welfare programs lacking
February 1st, 2010 Beth San Diego County’s social welfare safety net is riddled with gaps. A voiceofsandiego.org investigation has found that the county government’s historical resistance to provide social welfare programs has left a wide chasm between last-resort aid and those on the bottom rungs of economic survival.
Legislation proposed to help protect young runaways
January 8th, 2010 Beth Disabled workers paid cents-per-hour for work at state-run homes
December 29th, 2009 Mark Horvit Clark Kauffman of the Des Moines Register reports that more than 300 mentally retarded wards of the state are being paid less than the minimum wage for work performed at two state-run homes for the disabled. Seventy-four of the workers are paid an average hourly wage of 60 cents or less, and some of the [...]
Human Trafficking in America series
December 14th, 2009 Beth 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.”
Agent Orange series
December 4th, 2009 Beth A series by The Chicago Tribune traces the lingering impact of the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The evidence of exposure can still be seen in the many who suffer serious health issues, and birth defects have carried the legacy forth into a second generation.
Domestic Silence series
November 18th, 2009 Beth 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.
