The Marshall Project was born 10 years ago out of frustration and hope. Frustration that injustices and abuses in the criminal justice system were so rarely covered or publicly understood. And hope because, in a time of sustained low crime rates and increasing concern about the social and financial costs of mass incarceration, there appeared a bipartisan openness to change.
Over the last decade, The Marshall Project has produced a stream of investigations that have driven change and won countless awards. The project that put us on the map was “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” a riveting investigation into how a rape victim was disbelieved and prosecuted, while her rapist went on to attack more women. It won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a Netflix series.
We found innovative ways to expose the public to the range of voices and views of people behind bars and to deliver news to incarcerated people. We have invested in explanatory and engagement journalism, asking our audience what they need to know about the criminal justice system and delivering local judges’ guides and explainers. We created two widely circulated newsletters to disseminate probing coverage of the justice system: Opening Statement, our daily news roundup, and Closing Argument, a weekly spotlight on a timely criminal justice issue. We’ve established local reporting teams to help under-resourced local news outlets cover criminal justice in their own communities, with outlets in Cleveland, Jackson, Mississippi, and, next year, St. Louis.
To reach a broader range of people, including those with literacy challenges or those who don’t trust the news media, we’ve produced podcasts, illustrated comic books, animated videos, television synopses of our work and even printed fliers. We’ve developed “Investigate This!” toolkits to help journalists across the country cover criminal justice with more data resources and access to incarcerated people. And we’re connecting with millions of people on social platforms through engaging storytelling and information-sharing.
Now, after a pandemic, volatility in crime rates and increasingly polarized politics, we’ve seen sharp swings in public sentiment. There are rising fears of crime and immigration, often based on distorted or inaccurate data absorbed in separate, impenetrable, information bubbles. Our mission now is more urgent than ever — unearthing abuses in our justice and immigration systems, portraying reality in all its nuance, explaining complex, opaque systems, and spotlighting communities all too often ignored.
We pledge to you, our readers, that we will rise to the urgency of these times, and that the next 10 years will be filled with revealing and innovative journalism that continues to hold the powerful accountable and features voices long unheard.
We’re proud of all our work, and we can’t possibly sum up all our most impactful reporting in a short list. As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of The Marshall Project, we’ve selected 10 stories for you to revisit that show our range and shaped our first decade.
1. “Attica’s Ghosts” (2015)
This classic piece of investigative reporting exposed the brutality of life inside the notorious New York prison and the virtual immunity granted to guards who go bad. Tom Robbins’ story set the standard for how The Marshall Project could hold prisons to account. Following its publication with The New York Times, three prison guards pleaded guilty to misconduct; the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation; and prison officials began installing 1,875 cameras and nearly 1,000 microphones around the facility.
2. “Inside the Deadly World of Private Prisoner Transport” (2016)
Every year, tens of thousands of Americans who are arrested find themselves packed into private vans and taken on circuitous, often harrowing, journeys to other states to face charges. Reporters Eli Hager and Alysia Santo spent seven months investigating the poorly regulated world of private extradition, riddled with deaths, injuries, accidents and escapes. Our story with The New York Times sparked Justice Department investigations under two presidents.
3. “We Are Witnesses” (2017)
The impact of America’s criminal justice policies are often measured in numbers, like the more than 2.2 million people in our jails and prisons. This video series, our first major film project, offers a different calculation: the human cost of locking up so many of our citizens — from the perspective of the people ensnared in the system. This far-reaching project, published with The New Yorker, was nominated for an Emmy and led to two more editions in the series.
4. News Inside (2019) and “Inside Story” (2023)
Since the launch of The Marshall Project, we have published our weekly “Life Inside” essays, first-person accounts from people who live and work in the justice system. But because The Marshall Project publishes our work online, it has been close to impossible for those most affected by the legal system — people in prisons and jails — to read it. With that in mind, Lawrence Bartley created News Inside, a paper magazine that circulates for free in jails and prisons across the country. It has continued to grow over the last five years, now circulating in more than 1,600 prisons and jails in 48 states, and led to the creation of “Inside Story,” a television show that broadcasts inside prisons, as well as online.
5. “Mauled: When Police Dogs Are Weapons” (2020)
This series brought together The Marshall Project, AL.com, IndyStar and the Invisible Institute to investigate police dogs, the grievous wounds they inflict and the challenge of holding anyone accountable. A team of reporters, led by Abbie VanSickle, built a nationwide database of more than 150 severe police dog bites. We explored how most victims of dog bites were accused of minor offenses and some were innocent bystanders. Within days of the publication of our first story, Indianapolis police announced a new policy to limit the use of dogs. The series won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
6. “The Language Project” (2021)
From the earliest days of The Marshall Project, we had written about the words used to describe the incarcerated. Over time, we recognized how labels such as “inmate” can be stigmatizing, and we developed a policy that our writing will employ people-first language. Editor Akiba Solomon explained our decision-making process in “What Words We Use — and Avoid — When Covering People and Incarceration.” This set an example for the news industry and influenced The Associated Press when it revised its own style guidance for journalists on criminal justice issues this year.
7. “Testify” (2022)
In 2022, we began our first foray into local reporting when we launched our team in Cleveland. We began with our “Testify” project, examining six years of Cuyahoga County court data. The ongoing, data-driven project found that Black residents are arrested and sent to prison at disproportionate rates in the county, and although many defendants have previous charges, most of them aren’t for serious violent offenses. Our practices of rigorous data analysis and community outreach have spurred other original local investigations.
8. “Violation” and “Just Say You’re Sorry” (2023)
Last year, for the first time, The Marshall Project created two podcast series: “Violation,” an in-depth look at the murder conviction of Jacob Wideman in Arizona, and “Just Say You’re Sorry,” an examination of the controversial techniques of a former Texas ranger known for solving cold cases. Together, they have been downloaded more than 4 million times.
9. “‘Trump Remains Very Popular Here’: We Surveyed 54,000 People Behind Bars About the Election” (2024)
In 2020, we partnered with Slate to conduct the first-of-its-kind political survey of people behind bars. We poured through thousands of handwritten responses that shattered assumptions that incarcerated people would back Democrats. The survey explored how prison can change your political outlook and featured a range of individual voices. Led by Nicole Lewis and Anna Flagg, we repeated the survey for this year’s election, reaching tens of thousands more people and extending our analysis to incarcerated people in Ohio, the base of one of our local teams.
10. “She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. Then They Took Her Baby Away.” (2024)
In recent years, The Marshall Project has followed the growing efforts in many states to criminalize reproductive healthcare, and how mothers and pregnant people can be unwittingly ensnared in the legal system. Reporter Shoshana Walter wrote this moving narrative following one mother’s travails after a false positive drug test — and the widespread practice of hospitals reporting flawed test results to child welfare or law enforcement. Published with Reveal, Mother Jones and USA Today, the story examines how false positive drug tests at hospitals lead to a devastating bureaucratic response.
