THREAD: Hey, @keribla here. For decades, Houston crime coverage has ended w "anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS," along with a reward promise.

But recently, Crime Stoppers of Houston has been blasting out a different, more political message. On TV and online, the traditionally nonpartisan nonprofit condemns Democratic judges while praising Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Its stance also intersects with Crime Stoppers’ own financial interests, @nytimes’ @Fahrenthold & I found.
themarshallproject.org/2022/04/21/cri…

NEW: In the seaside city of New Bedford, Mass., home to the highest-earning commercial fishing port in the U.S., a tight-knit community of immigrant families is still struggling after being left out of most federal aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. THREAD themarshallproject.org/2021/12/15/ess… 2/ In the early days of the pandemic in 2020, the seafood plants of New Bedford were deemed essential by federal authorities, remaining open as other businesses locked down.

NEW: Police in rural areas shoot and kill about 200 people every year, yet there’s little public attention paid to these deaths, and no national call to action. We spent a year examining police shootings in rural America.

Here's what we found: trib.al/W2l3r6M Officers in rural areas fatally shot about 1,200 people from 2015 through 2020, while in cities there were at least 2,100 such deaths, according to our analysis; no comprehensive government database exists.

This week, new COVID-19 cases in prisons were near the lowest of the pandemic in @marshallproj and @AP’s data. But we noticed that @officialFBOP has been removing cases from their totals. So now we can’t accurately count how many cases there have been. themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-s… For context, @officialFBOP had reported more COVID-19 cases among prisoners — more than 49,000, including private facilities — than any system in the country. But now they are reporting more than 300 fewer cases than at the beginning of March.

New: Sara Gruen, author of the massive bestseller “Water for Elephants” embarked on an obsessive quest to help overturn the conviction of a man she is convinced has been wrongfully imprisoned. It nearly ruined her life.
trib.al/KK0b8uG Since her novel sold 10 million copies worldwide and inspired a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, Sara Gruen has received dozens of letters from prisoners. But one from a man named Chuck Murdoch was different. He didn’t ask for money or even a response.

NEW: 25 years ago this month, one article introduced a new term: “Superpredator.”

The phrase had a powerful impact on how we treat kids who commit crimes. Politicians have disavowed it. But not the media outlets that cemented it in our natl. vocabulary. bit.ly/334v4pF We analyzed media coverage after the term “superpredator” was coined.

Our review of stories from 40 media outlets in the five years after the term first appeared shows it popped up nearly 300 times. That is almost certainly an undercount.

THREAD: President Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, to the Supreme Court.

At 48, Barrett would be the youngest justice on the bench if confirmed, poised to shape a generation of American jurisprudence. nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/… Barrett has long been a favorite of Christian conservatives and anti-abortion activists.

“Her religious convictions are pro-life, and she lives those convictions,” Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, a longtime mentor, told @nytimes.
nytimes.com/2020/09/20/us/…

New from @Weihua_Li1 for @MarshallProj/@voxdotcom: what you need to know about crime rates ahead of the debate. From police funding to violent crime, we’ve got the numbers you need to wade through campaign messaging on crime waves and civil unrest. themarshallproject.org/2020/09/25/is-… There are 11 charts in there, but don’t worry, we’ll walk you through them. Plus, we made a handy graphic with some of the key points.

THREAD: Today the @ONA honored The Marshall Project with *ten nominations* for Online Journalism Awards, including General Excellence! awards.journalists.org/winners/2020/ "Tutwiler," our documentary collaboration with @frontlinepbs about a group of women supporting each other through pregnancy in one of Alabama's most notorious prisons, was nominated for Digital Video Storytelling in the Long Form category. themarshallproject.org/2020/05/06/the…

Several businesses in a Kenosha, Wisconsin neighborhood were set ablaze early Tuesday, as protests and unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake continued overnight.

More at @nytimes. nytimes.com/2020/08/25/us/… Blake underwent surgery Sunday and is in stable condition, his family and attorney said. jsonline.com/story/news/cri… via @journalsentinel

THREAD: As the presidential contest heats up, revisit our groundbreaking political survey of more than 8,000 people behind bars, in collaboration with @Slate.
themarshallproject.org/2020/03/11/wha… We asked thousands of incarcerated people across the country for their opinions on criminal justice reform, which political party they identify with and which presidential candidate they’d support.

Among the key findings:

THREAD: This is the story of two families, their grievously ill children, and unequal journeys toward justice.

And at the center, the complex, conflicted practice of child-abuse pediatrics. themarshallproject.org/2020/08/20/two… In the same year, each family would take their child to the hospital: Josue Santiago would find his son, Elihu, pale and unresponsive, while Molly Hayes and Daniel Namie would seek medical care for their son Alex after his oxygen levels dropped.

THREAD: Joseph R. Biden Jr. selected Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate on Tuesday.

The Marshall Project tracked her positions on key criminal justice issues along with other Democratic presidential candidates during the primary. themarshallproject.org/2019/10/10/202… The president has a great deal of power over the use of solitary confinement in the federal system. Senator Harris expressed support for ending it completely. themarshallproject.org/2019/10/10/202…

Kim Gardner, the progressive prosecutor in St. Louis, received over 60 percent of the vote Tuesday in a Democratic primary, all but ensuring her reelection in November. huffpost.com/entry/kim-gard… Gardner was criticized by President Trump and Missouri Governor Mike Parson for her decision to charge a St. Louis couple who wielded guns at Black Lives Matter protestors in June. riverfronttimes.com/foodblog/2020/…

Thread: In 1834, in the midst of a mass forced relocation of Indigenous people from the southeast U.S. to present-day Oklahoma, Congress defined "Indian Country" as “all land within the limits of any Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the United States Government.”

1/ The distinction was crucial: Washington had supreme power over the new treaty land, not the states.

But over the following decades, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Muscogee (Creek) and other Indigenous nations were forced to break apart communally held lands. 2/

THREAD: Last December, @MauriceChammah read a shocking account of a young man’s death in a rural Missouri jail.

Over the next six months, he talked to 50 former detainees and four former employees at St. Francois County's lockup. 1/
themarshallproject.org/2020/07/29/you… What @MauriceChammah found was a local house of horrors. 2/

https://twitter.com/geraldinesealey/status/1288448063992926209

New for The Marshall Project/@Slate, @keribla and @MauriceChammah interviewed victims’ relatives, prisoners, staff, and witnesses to compile an oral history of the first federal execution under Trump. themarshallproject.org/2020/07/24/wit… The federal government had executed just three men in the last half-century, until earlier this month when the Trump administration carried out three executions in one week. Daniel Lee’s death on July 14th marked the first federal execution in more than 17 years.

There's been a significant drop in the number of Americans behind bars over the past few months. But it's not for the reasons you might think.

Thread on new reporting/analysis by The Marshall Project + @AP.
themarshallproject.org/2020/07/16/pri… In March, there were roughly 1.3 million people in state and federal prisons—the most of any country in the world. In June, there were 1.2 million.

That's a decrease of roughly 8%. By comparison, the same population decreased by 2.2% in all of 2019, according to @verainstitute.

A new @AECFNews survey of 33 states finds that juvenile justice systems slowed the pace of releasing kids from detention over the past months, leaving many young people — disproportionately Black — still living in confinement as the pandemic rages.
aecf.org/blog/youth-det… Since March, disparities in detention have gotten worse, solely because Black youth have been released at a slower rate than their white peers. aecf.org/blog/youth-det…

🧵: You may have spied us on Last Week Tonight yesterday...

https://twitter.com/LastWeekTonight/status/1275066278110048257

Here are some of the stories noted in last night's segment. First, up, @keribla and @keegan_hamilton's investigation into how federal prisons became coronavirus death traps: themarshallproject.org/2020/06/18/i-b…

Thread: A number of readers have recently discovered our 2014 story on the Pentagon’s controversial 1033 program, which distributes surplus military equipment to police departments across the country. themarshallproject.org/2014/12/03/the… We’ve continued collecting data on the 1033 program since then: you can download the spreadsheets detailing the gear giveaways—and see what’s been given to your county—here. github.com/themarshallpro…