New York, NY, January 23, 2018 – Karol V. Mason, President of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, today announced that Spencer Woodman of The Chicago Reader and The Investigative Fund, and the investigative team of Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch of The Miami Herald are the winners of the 13th annual John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim 2018 Awards for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting.
“We are proud to honor these journalists for their enterprise and for the inspiring example they set for their colleagues,” said President Mason. “They demonstrate the continuing importance of the role played by our media in today’s criminal justice debates.”
The prizes, administered by John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice (CMCJ), recognize the previous year’s best print and online justice reporting in a U.S.-based media outlet between November 2016 and October 2017. Winning entries in each of the two categories share a cash award of $1,500 and a plaque. Runners-up (see below) receive a certificate of Honorable Mention.
Spencer Woodman of The Chicago Reader has won the 2018 John Jay Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (single-story category) for his investigation of Chicago’s Cook County Jail. His story, produced in partnership with The Investigative Fund, entitled, “Incarceration Without Trial,” revealed backlogs in the city’s court system that have resulted in more than 1,000 inmates awaiting trial for two years or more. Woodman’s year-long investigation, which began with a Freedom of Information request, disclosed that people of color account for 93 percent of those in pretrial detention for at least two years, and brought home the troubling fact that “the right to a speedy trial has become a distant dream in Chicago's Cook County Jail,” said Esther Kaplan, Editor of The Investigative Fund, in her nomination letter. Among other responses, it prompted calls for reforms to the bail system.
Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch of The Miami Herald have won the 2018 John Jay Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (series category) for their multi-part series "Fight Club,” a six-part investigation of conditions in Florida’s juvenile justice detention centers. “Marbin Miller and Burch documented a cavalcade of casual brutality, sexual exploitation, medical neglect and administrative incompetence,” wrote Herald senior editor Casey Frank in his nominating letter. As a result of the “overwhelming” response to the story from the public and officials, Frank added, “juvenile justice, an afterthought for years, moved front and center on the state’s agenda heading into the spring (2018) legislative session.”
Runner-up in the single-story category was awarded to Cary Aspinwall of The Dallas Morning News for “Overlooked,” which focused on the plight of children of imprisoned parents. “Cary was able to prove that neither law enforcement nor the courts watched out for kids whose mothers went to jail,” said editor Mike Wilson, noting that Cary’s investigation documented a 44 percent increase in the number of women imprisoned in Texas jails over the last five years. “The power of the narrative – a real-life ‘Moonlight’, one reader called it—helped focus attention on the flaws in the way Dallas handles pre-trial detention,” and prompted promises by county authorities to “fix a bail system that prefers to jail women rather than allow them to care for their kids.”
Runners-up in the series category were Sharon Cohen and Adam Geller of The Associated Press for “Locked up for Life,” a multipart examination of individuals sentenced to life without parole for crime committed as juveniles. The story, produced with contributing reporter Juliet Linderman and contributing video journalist Mike Householder, and assisted by files from AP reporters in all 50 states, was the first nationwide examination of the aftermath of the 2012 Supreme Court decision that banned mandatory life without parole for juveniles in murder cases, and the Court’s subsequent 2016 ruling that those already serving such sentences—more than 2,000—may be entitled to new sentences and a chance at freedom. Their “relentless reporting” showed wide disparities in how the reforms mandated by the Court were implemented, said AP Enterprise Editor Pauline Arrillaga in her nominating letter, and have already fueled calls for “further court action.”
Alexa Capeloto, Associate Professor, John Jay College; Joe Domanick, Associate Director, CMCJ; Ted Gest, president, Criminal Justice Journalists; Ann Givens, of The Trace; Katti Gray, contributing editor, The Crime Report; Mark Obbie, a criminal justice writer and former executive editor of American Lawyer; and Topher Sanders of ProPublica (co-winner of the 2017 Journalism Prize in the Series Category).
The awards will be presented February 15, 2018 at a dinner in New York City, held in conjunction with the 13th annual John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America. Reservations for the dinner, which will also honor broadcasting legend Bill Moyers as this year’s “Justice Trailblazer,” can be made here. Moyers’ award will be presented by John Jay President Karol Mason, former NY Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, and emcee Errol Louis of NY1.
The awards dinner is the cornerstone event of the 13th Annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City February 15-16, 2017.
The symposium, “Justice in the Heartland,” will explore the opioid crisis and other challenges of the changing environment for criminal justice reform in 2018.
Speakers include: Louis Dekmar, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police; The Hon. Craig Hannah, presiding judge of Buffalo’s Opioid Treatment Court; Leanne Bertsch, president of the Association of State Correctional Administrators; and Eric Gonzalez, Brooklyn (NY) District Attorney. A one-time fee of $25 is required for attendance at the on-the-record symposium. For a full list of speakers, and to register for the conference, please click here.
A record 33 U.S. journalists from print, online and broadcast outlets have also been awarded Reporting Fellowships to attend the 13th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, including four who have received special investigative fellowships from the Quattrone Center on the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for projects examining systemic issues in the justice system. These unique fellowships are aimed at encouraging and promoting top-quality journalism on criminal justice. The Fellows were selected from a wide pool of applicants based on editors’ recommendations, and on investigative reporting projects underway or in the planning stage. A full list of the journalism fellows is below.
The John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium, administered by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice art John Jay College, is the only national gathering that brings together journalists, legislators, policymakers, scholars and practitioners for candid on-the-record discussions on emerging issues of U.S. criminal justice.
Overall support for the conference and fellowships comes from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, the Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
(in Alphabetical Order)
Alexandria Bordas Asheville Citizen Times, North Carolina
Melissa Brown Montgomery Advertiser, Alabama
Lynsi Burton SeattlePI
Kathryn Casteel FiveThirtyEight
Lelani Clark TV host/producer, Tough Cookie Productions
Sharon Cohen Associated Press
Micah Danney Freelancer
Kia Gregory Freelancer
Megan Guza Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
John Hinton Winston Salem-Journal
Anat Kamm Freelancer
Ashley Kang The Stand
Kamala Kelkar PBS NewsHour Weekend
George Lavender KCRW-Santa Monica
Madeleine List Cape Cod Times
Craig McCarthy NJ.com/The Star-Ledger
Thomasi McDonald The News & Observer (Raleigh NC)
Lauren McGaughy The Dallas Morning News
Sam Newhouse Metro Philadelphia
Madeleine O’Neill Erie Times-News/GoErie.com
Kenneth R. Rosen The New York Times
Caitlin Schmidt The Arizona Daily Star
Zachary Siegel Harvard Law Fair Punishment Project
Mallory Simon CNN
Irene Spezzamonte Freelancer
Sean P. Sullivan NJ.com/The Star-Ledger
Monica Vendituoli Fayetteville Observer
Grace Toohey The Advocate (Baton Rouge)
Conrad Wilson Oregon Public Broadcasting
(in Alphabetical Order)
Jaylyn Cook Herald & Review (Decatur, Illinois)
Jonathan Edwards The Virginian-Pilot
Donna Ladd Jackson (Miss) Free Press
Eva Ruth Moravec Texas Justice Initiative/freelance
About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit
The Center on Media, Crime and Justice, established at John Jay College in 2006, is the nation's only practice- and research-oriented think tank devoted to encouraging and developing high-quality reporting on criminal justice. Publisher of The Crime Report, it promotes better-informed public debate on the complex 21st century challenges of law enforcement, public security and justice in a globalized urban society.
The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation sponsors scholarly research on problems of violence.
The Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School [LINK] is a national research and policy hub created to catalyze long-term structural improvements to the US criminal justice system.
