A private contractor has been ordered to pay restitution over predatory prison banking practices similar to those exposed in a Center for Public Integrity investigation. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Oct. 19 ordered JPay, a company that provides financial services to prisons and jails across the country, to pay a $2 million fine […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
States urged to repeal cops’ special legal protections
Late last month, once-promising negotiations to strike a bipartisan deal on policing reform broke down on Capitol Hill, dashing hopes for the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. “After months of exhausting every possible pathway to a bipartisan deal, it remains out of reach right now,” U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a New […]
Posted inFuture of Warfare
The US nuclear arsenal is becoming more destructive and possibly more risky
A sophisticated electronic sensor buried in hardened metal shells at the tip of a growing number of America’s ballistic missiles reflects a significant achievement in weapons engineering that experts say could help pave the way for reductions in the size of the country’s nuclear arsenal but also might create new security perils. This story also […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
FOIA and fact checking: Essential to investigative reporting
The Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country, and Research Editor Peter Newbatt Smith is its longest-serving employee. He’s at the center of two critical aspects of Public Integrity’s investigative journalism — overseeing the newsroom’s rigorous fact checking process, and pressing government agencies to comply with the […]
Posted inInequality
Officials announce new mortgage discrimination enforcement
This story was reported by The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom investigating the effects of technology on society. Citing a recent investigation by The Markup as evidence of a nationwide problem, the U.S. Department of Justice, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies announced a new initiative Friday to combat discriminatory mortgage lending practices. At the […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Public Integrity joins argument in free press court case
The Center for Public Integrity has joined Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and three other nonprofit news organizations in submitting a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a press freedom case. In the case of CoreCivic Inc., v. Candide Group LLC, the brief argues for affirming […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
Election officials scramble to find poll workers
A few weeks ago, election officials in Camden County, New Jersey were starting to worry. Already halfway through poll worker recruitment and training, they still had too many empty spots. “We were a little bit panicky,” remembers Richard Ambrosino, a member of the elections board in the southern New Jersey county. Many older poll workers […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
An investigative reporter’s duty to confront ‘inconvenient truths’
Racial, gender and economic disparities in education is a key focus of the Center for Public Integrity’s investigative journalism about the causes and effects of inequality in the U.S. Senior Reporter Corey Mitchell brings more than a decade of experience to the education beat. Prior to joining Public Integrity, Mitchell was associate editor and a […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
Underreporting undermines accountability about police and schools
Public Integrity’s recent report, “When schools call police on kids,” showed that nearly 230,000 students were referred to law enforcement across the country during the 2017-18 school year and more than 50,000 were arrested. But our reporting also revealed something else: the numbers likely were far worse. Some of the nation’s largest school districts had […]
Posted inCheated at Work
El robo de salarios es peor en industrias con muchos inmigrantes
This story also appeared in Associated Press and Univision Audelia Molina, una inmigrante mexicana, ganaba 10 centavos por cada prenda que cortaba en una fábrica de Los Ángeles, la capital estadounidense del ensamblaje de ropa. Su salario era tan miserable que empezó a trabajar 11 horas por día para incrementar su producción. Cuando pidió un […]
Posted inCheated at Work
Wage theft hits immigrants — hard
This story also appeared in Associated Press and Univision Audelia Molina, a Mexican immigrant, was earning 10 cents for every garment she trimmed at a factory in Los Angeles, America’s clothing-assembly capital. Her wage was so meager that she started putting in 11-hour days to drive up production. When she asked for a raise, a […]
Posted inCheated at Work
¿Temes ser víctima del robo de salarios? Esto es lo que debes saber.
¿Qué es el robo de salarios? El robo de salarios no es un término legal. Es una frase que se utiliza para describir las infracciones en el pago del salario mínimo y horas extras. Cuando las empresas no les pagan a los empleados todo el dinero que se les deben, deliberadamente, se considera un robo […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Public Integrity founder Charles Lewis wins lifetime achievement award
Center for Public Integrity founder Charles Lewis won a lifetime achievement award from the Institute for Nonprofit News Wednesday for what the organization described as his significant, innovative and lasting contributions to the field of independent, nonprofit news. Lewis, 67, is now a professor of journalism at American University School of Communication, where he was […]
Posted inCriminalizing kids
Five new signs of a crisis in police accountability
Five major headlines in the news recently offer significant insight into America’s crisis in police accountability: 1. Black kids arrested for a crime that doesn’t exist Earlier this fall, the Center for Public Integrity and a coalition of other journalism organizations including USA TODAY Network published “Criminalizing Kids,” a nationwide look at the disproportionate harm […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
An investigative reporter’s job: ‘Dig deep and uncover the truth’
Alexia Fernández Campbell covers employment and workers’ rights for the Center for Public Integrity, one of the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative journalism organizations. We focus on the causes and effects of inequality in the United States, and labor is a part of daily life at the heart of those conversations. Over the past two years […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
Cheating workers on the U.S.-Mexico border
Cheating workers out of overtime is a common wage violation. But paying workers in the United States in Mexican pesos? Failing to pay them the U.S. hourly minimum wage? It sounds outlandish, but it’s happened. And it’s illegal. Since January alone, the U.S. Department of Labor has reached back-wage agreements with two San Diego companies […]
Posted inCoronavirus and Inequality
Once again, some states are choosing who gets COVID-19 care
More than 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, some states are once again facing shortages of medical resources needed to care for sick patients — leaving some to enter crisis mode or consider rationing vital resources, such as intensive care unit beds. In Idaho a shortage of ICU beds is postponing non-emergency surgeries, while hospitals contend […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
See how your state changed voting laws in 7 key areas
The Voting Rights Lab tracked more than 2,600 election bills around the country as of early September, and 45 states passed 221 bills into law, the organization said. It characterized 41 of the new laws as “anti-voter,” and 102 as “pro-voter.” Dive deeper with Public Integrity’s interactive map. It provides a snapshot of some changes to […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
States adopt ‘historic wave of restrictions’ to the right to vote
Legislators around the country have overhauled laws governing access to voting in the wake of the 2020 election, with states increasingly diverging on how difficult it should be to cast a ballot. About a quarter of Americans live in states trying to expand voter access and roughly an equal number live in states making it […]
Posted inVeterans Charities
Donors file class action lawsuit against Las Vegas telemarketer alleging scam PAC scheme
Political donors filed a class action lawsuit this week against Richard Zeitlin, a Las Vegas-based telemarketer they accuse of facilitating a “massive money-making scheme.” Zeitlin was the focus of an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity in 2019. The lawsuit alleges Zeitlin and his companies violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by “siphoning … […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Police presence in schools causes long-term harm, advocates say
The presence of police patrolling school hallways has fundamental consequences and causes long-term harm to Black, brown and disabled students, in particular, a panel of experts said in a forum hosted by the Center for Public Integrity and San Diego investigative journalism organization inewsource Wednesday night. “Criminalizing Kids,” a Public Integrity investigation by Corey Mitchell, […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
Proposed iPhone protections could put LGBTQ youth at risk
Virtual communities have long provided a space for LGBTQ youth to explore their identities, allowing queer children to safely come out of the closet without fear of abuse from unsupportive parents. But as technology companies ratchet up surveillance in the name of content moderation, the digital privacy of LGBTQ youth and other vulnerable people may […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Join us for a live discussion: when schools call police on kids
Join the Center for Public Integrity and inewsource for a live discussion on the criminalization of students of color and students with disabilities in schools across the country. In 46 states, Black students were referred to law enforcement at higher rates than the total referral rate for all students, according to our analysis of federal […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Public Integrity sues for National Guard border deployment records
The Center for Public Integrity filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and South Dakota National Guard on Wednesday seeking public release of records related to a decision by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to deploy the Guard to the Texas-Mexico border earlier this year that raised issues about private funding of military […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
Biden’s racial equity efforts for farmers of color hit legal roadblocks
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order putting racial equity at the center of policy, programs and funding, a response to the racial justice push that helped propel him to victory. One notable effort is a $4 billion debt relief program, included in the American Rescue Plan Act passed […]
Posted inCriminalizing kids
ACLU renews push for school policing law after our investigation
The numbers are troubling, the images and stories indelible. Despite years of pressure on schools to stop policing students, we found that students continue to suffer from encounters with law enforcement in communities big and small. In Maryland’s largest school district, police body camera footage captured an officer handcuffing a Black kindergarten student, telling the […]
Posted inCriminalizing kids
Criminalizing kids: What’s happening in communities
Students of color and those with disabilities face encounters with law enforcement at school at a higher rate than their peers. That’s according to an analysis of the latest student referral to police data from the Department of Education. The Center for Public Integrity in collaboration with USA TODAY and Univision examined these disparities on […]
Posted inDemocracy
Texas abortion law reflects GOP turn towards citizen enforcement
The new Texas law effectively banning nearly all abortions in the state relies on private citizens to enforce it, the highest-profile example of a growing push by Republicans to give supporters broad power to sue over issues important to their base. A Tennessee law allows any student, teacher or employee to sue if they are […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
What happened when I reported that USPS keeps cheating mail carriers
The first email came from a mail carrier in California. It landed in my inbox at 11:04 a.m. on Aug. 31 — less than two hours after the Center for Public Integrity published its investigation into wage theft at the U.S. Postal Service. The mail carrier wanted me to know that our findings are accurate, […]
Posted inCriminalizing kids
Lo que pasa cuando la policía es llamada para resolver problemas en las escuelas
Esta historia se produjo como parte de una colaboración con Univision, el Center for Public Integrity y USA TODAY. Un agente de seguridad escolar sacó a un alumno de tercer grado de una clase, lo llevó a un baño para empleados, cerró la puerta y lo regañó, diciéndole al aterrado estudiante que “dejara de llorar como una niña”. ¿Cuál […]