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<pubDate>Fri, 15 Sep 2017 23:20:44 +0000</pubDate>
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<title>Experts Say the Use of Private Email by Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission Isn’t Legal</title>
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by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/jessica-huseman">Jessica Huseman</a> </p>
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<p>President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission came under fire earlier this month when a lawsuit and media reports revealed that the commissioners were using private emails to conduct public business. Commission co-chair Kris Kobach confirmed this week that most of them continue to do so.</p>
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<p>Experts say the commission’s email practices do not appear to comport with federal law. “The statute here is clear,” said Jason Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.</p>
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<p>Essentially, Baron said, the commissioners have <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title44-section2209&num=0&edition=prelim">three options</a>: 1. They can use a government email address; 2. They can use a private email address but copy every message to a government account; or 3. They can use a private email address and forward each message to a government account within 20 days. According to Baron, those are the requirements of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which the commission must comply with <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/commission-charter.pdf">under its charter</a>.</p>
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<p>“All written communications between or among its members involving commission business are permanent records destined to be preserved at the National Archives,” said Baron. “Without specific guidance, commission members may not realize that their email communications about commission business constitute White House records.”</p>
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<p>ProPublica reviewed dozens of emails to and from members of the commission as well as written directives on records retention. The commissioners appear to have been given no instructions to use government email or copy or forward messages to a government account.</p>
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<p>Commissioner Matthew Dunlap, the secretary of state for Maine, confirmed that he’d received no such directives. “That’s news to me,” he said, when read the PRA provision governing emails. “I think it would be a little cleaner if I had a us.gov email account.”</p>
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<p>Dunlap’s account is disputed by Andrew Kossack, the executive director of the commission. Kossack said attorneys from the Government Services Administration provided training on the PRA before the commission’s first meeting on July 19. Kossack provided <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/PACEI-GSA-FACA-Overview.pdf">a copy of the PowerPoint</a> presentation. However, the word “email” appears in only a single slide — with no mention of anything relating to the use of government email.</p>
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<p>Notably, the commission did not receive any training in records retention until the July 19 meeting, even though the commission was formed in May and had been actively engaged in commission business.</p>
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<p>Indeed, the commission had kicked into high gear on June 28, when it sent a letter to all 50 secretaries of state requesting publicly available voter rolls. The response was swift and negative, and commissioners began receiving a wave of messages from election officials and the public.</p>
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<p>Despite this, the commissioners were offered no instructions then on how to preserve communications. Baron said such messages would presumptively be considered presidential records, and “the obligation to preserve such records would have arisen on day one.”</p>
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<p>In a statement, Kossack denied there is an obligation to provide commissioners with government email addresses. He maintained that the commission is required only to “preserve emails and other records related to work on commission matters, regardless of the forum on which the records are created or sent, which the commission and its members are doing.”</p>
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<p>After the commission’s most recent meeting, on Tuesday, Kobach confirmed that he plans to continue to use his personal gmail account to conduct commission business. Using his Kansas secretary of state email address, he said, would be a “waste of state resources” as he’s acting as a private citizen on the commission and not in his role as secretary of state.</p>
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<p>Dunlap has interpreted the requirements differently. He’s trying to ensure his state email account is used so that emails can be made available to constituents under Maine state law. Even this is a struggle, he said, asserting that commissioners continue to email him at his personal account despite multiple requests that they send email to his government account.</p>
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<p>“I really don’t understand why they keep using my personal Gmail account instead of my official state email. But I’m saving everything!” Dunlap wrote to himself on August 7, when he forwarded a communication from the commission to his government address. He has, it appears, continued to immediately forward all emails sent to his personal address by the commission to his state address.</p>
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<p>At ProPublica’s request, Dunlap shared every email he has received or sent relating to the commission. The majority went to personal email accounts.</p>
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<p>At their recent meeting in New Hampshire, Kossack provided commissioners printed instructions on how to retain their own emails related to a lawsuit filed against the commission by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.</p>
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<p>Dunlap said these instructions are the only written set of instructions on records retention he recalls receiving. (The instructions leave records retention entirely to the discretion of each member of the commission, which Dunlap said concerns him.)</p>
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<p>Past commissions with similar missions were not allowed such wide discretion. The Presidential Commission on Election Administration, formed by the Obama administration in March 2013, provided ethics and records retention training days after commissioners were nominated. Each commissioner was provided with a federal email address that automatically archived all messages. PCEA documents show extensive, specific instructions on records retention and compliance with FACA.</p>
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<p>Richard Painter, who served as the George W. Bush administration’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, expressed shock that the current commission is being allowed to rely on personal email accounts (which are to be forwarded to Kossack at their discretion). “This is just sloppy,” he said, adding that waiting more than two months to offer ethics training was just another sign that the Trump administration “doesn’t take ethics training seriously.”</p>
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<p>One footnote: Among the emails provided by Dunlap was <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4051327-Carter-Page-Email.html">a message from Carter Page</a>, a former policy adviser to the Trump campaign who has reportedly attracted the attention of investigators probing the Russia imbroglio. Page sent an email on July 5 to three accounts associated with Kobach and cc’d Dunlap, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson. In it, he implored the commission to investigate “the Obama administration’s misuse of federal resources of the Intelligence Community in their unjustified attacks on myself and other volunteers who peacefully supported [Trump’s] campaign as private citizens.”</p>
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<p>“The work of your commission offers an essential opportunity to take further steps toward helping to further restore the integrity of the American democracy following their abuses of last year,” he wrote.</p>
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<p>There is no evidence this email was forwarded to a federal email account. Page, Kossack and Kobach did not respond to requests for comment about the email.</p>
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<dc:subject>The Trump Administration</dc:subject>
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||
<dc:date>2017-09-15T22:21:00+00:00</dc:date>
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<dc:creator>by Jessica Huseman</dc:creator>
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</item>
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<item>
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<title>Facebook Moves to Prevent Advertisers From Targeting Haters</title>
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<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6800034</link>
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<pubDate>Fri, 15 Sep 2017 17:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-moves-to-prevent-advertisers-from-targeting-haters#134629</guid>
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<p class="byline">
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by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/daniel-golden">Daniel Golden</a> </p>
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<p>In the wake of <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertisers-to-reach-jew-haters">ProPublica’s report</a> Thursday that Facebook advertisers could have directed pitches to almost 2,300 people interested in “Jew hater” and other anti-Semitic topics, the world’s largest social network said it would no longer allow advertisers to target groups identified by self-reported information.</p>
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<p>“As people fill in their education or employer on their profile, we have found a small percentage of people who have entered offensive responses,” the company <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/09/updates-to-our-ad-targeting/">said in a statement</a>. “…We are removing these self-reported targeting fields until we have the right processes in place to prevent this issue.”</p>
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<p>Facebook had already removed the anti-Semitic categories — which also included “How to burn jews” and “History of ‘why jews ruin the world’” — after we asked the company about them earlier this week. Then, after our article was published, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/09/14/facebook_let_advertisers_target_jew_haters_it_doesn_t_end_there.html">Slate reported</a> that Facebook advertisers could target people interested in other topics such as “Kill Muslim Radicals” and “Ku-Klux-Klan.” Facebook’s algorithm automatically transforms people’s self-reported interests, employers and fields of study into advertising categories.</p>
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<p>Because audiences in the hateful categories were “incredibly low,” the ad campaigns targeting them reached “an extremely small number of people,” Facebook said. Its statement didn’t identify the advertisers. Conceivably, those who might find it helpful to target anti-Semites could range from recruiters for far-right groups to marketers of Nazi memorabilia.</p>
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<p>ProPublica documented that the anti-Semitic ad categories were real by paying $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes.</p>
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<p>Facebook’s advertising has become a focus of national attention since it disclosed last week that it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russian-political-ads.html?mcubz=3">had discovered $100,000</a> worth of ads placed during the 2016 presidential election season by “inauthentic” accounts that appeared to be affiliated with Russia.</p>
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<p>Like many tech companies, Facebook has long taken a hands-off approach to its advertising business. Unlike traditional media companies that select the audiences they offer advertisers, Facebook generates its ad categories automatically based both on what users explicitly share with Facebook and what they implicitly convey through their online activity.</p>
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<p>Traditionally, tech companies have contended that it’s not their role to censor the internet or to discourage legitimate political expression. In the wake of the violent protests in Charlottesville by right-wing groups that included self-described Nazis, Facebook and other tech companies vowed to strengthen their monitoring of hate speech.</p>
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<p>Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote at the time that “there is no place for hate in our community,” and pledged to keep a closer eye on hateful posts and threats of violence on Facebook. “It’s a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong — as if this is somehow not obvious,” he wrote.</p>
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<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6800034.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
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<dc:subject>Machine Bias</dc:subject>
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<dc:date>2017-09-15T17:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
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<dc:creator>by Daniel Golden</dc:creator>
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</item>
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<item>
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<title>Independent Monitors Found Benzene Levels After Harvey Six Times Higher Than Guidelines</title>
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<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6790121</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 14 Sep 2017 20:31:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/harvey-manchester#134617</guid>
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<description><![CDATA[
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<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/lisa-song">Lisa Song</a> and <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/al-shaw">Al Shaw</a>, ProPublica, and <span class="name">Kiah Collier</span>, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/">The Texas Tribune</a> </p>
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<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6790121.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
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<dc:subject>Environment</dc:subject>
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<dc:date>2017-09-14T20:31:00+00:00</dc:date>
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<dc:creator>by Lisa Song and Al Shaw, ProPublica, and Kiah Collier, The Texas Tribune</dc:creator>
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</item>
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<item>
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<title>Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’</title>
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<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6789850</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 14 Sep 2017 20:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertisers-to-reach-jew-haters#134578</guid>
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<description><![CDATA[
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<p class="byline">
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||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/julia-angwin">Julia Angwin</a>, <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/madeleine-varner">Madeleine Varner</a> and <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/ariana-tobin">Ariana Tobin</a> </p>
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<p>Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you. </p>
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<p>Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’”</p>
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<p>To test if these ad categories were real, we paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes.</p>
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<p>After we contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories — which were created by an algorithm rather than by people — and said it would explore ways to fix the problem, such as limiting the number of categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed to buyers.</p>
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<p>“There are times where content is surfaced on our platform that violates our standards,” said Rob Leathern, product management director at Facebook. “In this case, we’ve removed the associated targeting fields in question. We know we have more work to do, so we’re also building new guardrails in our product and review processes to prevent other issues like this from happening in the future.”</p>
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<p>Facebook’s advertising has become a focus of national attention since it disclosed last week that it had discovered $100,000 worth of ads placed during the 2016 presidential election season by <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/09/information-operations-update/amp/">“inauthentic” accounts that appeared to be affiliated with Russia</a>.</p>
|
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<p>Like many tech companies, Facebook has long taken a hands off approach to its advertising business. Unlike traditional media companies that select the audiences they offer advertisers, Facebook generates its ad categories automatically based both on what users explicitly share with Facebook and what they implicitly convey through their online activity.</p>
|
||
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<p>Traditionally, tech companies have contended that it’s not their role to censor the Internet or to discourage legitimate political expression. In the wake of the violent protests in Charlottesville by right-wing groups that included self-described Nazis, Facebook and other tech companies vowed to strengthen their monitoring of hate speech.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103969849282011?pnref=story">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote</a> at the time that “there is no place for hate in our community,” and pledged to keep a closer eye on hateful posts and threats of violence on Facebook. “It’s a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong — as if this is somehow not obvious,” he wrote. </p>
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<p>But Facebook apparently did not intensify its scrutiny of its ad buying platform. In all likelihood, the ad categories that we spotted were automatically generated because people had listed those anti-Semitic themes on their Facebook profiles as an interest, an employer or a “field of study.” Facebook’s algorithm automatically transforms people’s declared interests into advertising categories.</p>
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<p>Here is a screenshot of our ad buying process on the company’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/business">advertising portal</a>:</p>
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<figure class="image large left">
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<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline01-2274.png" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline01-2274.png 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline01-2274.png 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline01-2274.png 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline01-2274.png 2000w" />
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</figure>
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<p>This is not the first controversy over Facebook’s ad categories. Last year, ProPublica was <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers-exclude-users-by-race">able to block an ad</a> that we bought in Facebook’s housing categories from being shown to African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, raising the question of whether such ad targeting violated laws against discrimination in housing advertising. After ProPublica’s article appeared, Facebook built a system that it said would <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-to-stop-allowing-some-advertisers-to-exclude-users-by-race">prevent such ads from being approved</a>.</p>
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<p>Last year, ProPublica also collected a list of the advertising categories Facebook was providing to advertisers. We downloaded <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-doesnt-tell-users-everything-it-really-knows-about-them">more than 29,000 ad categories</a> from Facebook’s ad system — and found categories ranging from an interest in “Hungarian sausages” to “People in households that have an estimated household income of between $100K and $125K.”</p>
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<p>At that time, we did not find any anti-Semitic categories, but we do not know if we captured all of Facebook’s possible ad categories, or if these categories were added later. A Facebook spokesman didn’t respond to a question about when the categories were introduced.</p>
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<p>Last week, acting on a tip, we logged into Facebook’s automated ad system to see if “Jew hater” was really an ad category. We found it, but discovered that the category — with only <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Jew-hater-is-2274-people.png">2,274 people in it</a> — was <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Jew-hater-_too-specific.png">too small</a> for Facebook to allow us to buy an ad pegged only to Jew haters.</p>
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<p>Facebook’s automated system suggested “Second Amendment” as an additional category that would boost our audience size to 119,000 people, presumably because its system had correlated gun enthusiasts with anti-Semites.</p>
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<aside class="promo medium right">
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<div class="lead-art">
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<a class="aspect-3-2" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-doesnt-tell-users-everything-it-really-knows-about-them">
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<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/legacy/images/ngen/gypsy_big_image/_threeTwo400w/20161227-facebook-630x420.jpg"/>
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<div class="description">
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<h3 class="hed"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-doesnt-tell-users-everything-it-really-knows-about-them">Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them</a></h3>
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<h4 class="dek">The site shows users how Facebook categorizes them. It doesn’t reveal the data it is buying about their offline lives. </h4>
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</div>
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</div>
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</aside>
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<p>Instead, we chose additional categories that popped up <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Suggested-categories-_Jew-h.png">when we typed in “jew h”</a>: “How to burn Jews,” and “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’” Then we added a category that Facebook suggested <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Suggested-Categories-Hitler.png">when we typed in “Hitler</a>”: a category called “Hitler did nothing wrong.” All were described as “fields of study.”</p>
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<p>These ad categories were tiny. <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwDYM_Qm5fLWZlQ5MlRBcGx5RU0">Only two people</a> were listed as the audience size for “<a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-2-people-in-how-to-burn-jews-category.png">how to burn jews</a>,” and just one for “History of ‘<a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-1-person-for-how-jews-ruin-the-world.png">why jews ruin the world.’”</a> Another 15 people comprised the viewership for “<a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-15-for-Hitler-did-nothing-wrong.png">Hitler did nothing wrong</a>.”</p>
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<p>Facebook’s automated system told us that we still didn’t have a large enough audience to make a purchase. So we added “German Schutzstaffel,” commonly known as the Nazi SS, and the “Nazi Party,” which were both described to advertisers as groups of “employers.” Their audiences were larger: <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-3194-people-listed-as-employed-by-SS-Nazis.png">3,194 for the SS</a> and <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-2249-listed-under-Nazi-Party.png">2,449 for Nazi Party</a>.</p>
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<p>Still, Facebook said we needed more — so we added people with an interest in the National Democratic Party of Germany, a far-right, ultranationalist political party, with its much <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-194600-potential-audience-for-NPD.png">larger viewership of 194,600</a>.</p>
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|
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<p>Once we had our audience, we submitted our ad — which promoted an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/propublica/posts/10155773410229445">unrelated ProPublica news article</a>. Within 15 minutes, Facebook approved our ad, with one change. In <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-What-FB-converted-Boosted-Post-1-to-and-approved.png">its approval screen</a>, Facebook described the ad targeting category “Jew hater” as “Antysemityzm,” the Polish word for anti-Semitism. Just to make sure it was referring to the same category, we bought two additional ads using the term “Jew hater” in combination with <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Ad-buy-2-what-we-submitted.png">other</a> <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Ad-buy-3-what-we-submitted.png">terms</a>. <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-What-Facebook-ultimately-approved-converted-it-to.png">Both</a> <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Ad-buy-3-what-Facebook-accepted.png">times</a>, Facebook changed the ad targeting category “Jew hater” to “Antisemityzm” in its approval.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Here is one of our approved ads from Facebook:</p>
|
||
<figure class="image large left">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline02-boosted-and-approved.png" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline02-boosted-and-approved.png 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline02-boosted-and-approved.png 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline02-boosted-and-approved.png 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline02-boosted-and-approved.png 2000w" />
|
||
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>A few days later, Facebook sent us <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Results-summary-of-ad-buys.png">the results of our campaigns</a>. Our three ads reached 5,897 people, generating 101 clicks, and 13 “engagements” — which could be a “like” a “share” or a comment on a post.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Since we contacted Facebook, most of the anti-Semitic <a href="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20170914-Categories-deleted-9_14.png">categories have disappeared</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said that they didn’t appear to have been widely used. “We have looked at the use of these audiences and campaigns and it’s not common or widespread,” he said. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>We looked for analogous advertising categories for other religions, such as “Muslim haters.” Facebook didn’t have them.</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6789850.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Machine Bias</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-14T20:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Julia Angwin, Madeleine Varner and Ariana Tobin</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>The Trump Administration Plans to End a Refugee Program for Children</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6787578</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Sep 2017 15:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/the-trump-administration-to-end-a-refugee-program-for-central-america-children#134571</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/marcelo-rochabrun">Marcelo Rochabrun</a> </p>
|
||
<p>The Trump administration plans to stop accepting refugee applications from children with U.S.-based parents from three violence-riddled Central American countries — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — according to the summary of a presentation the State Department made recently to refugee organizations.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The decision to end the Central American Minors program, which began in 2014 and is the only refugee program aimed at helping people from that region, could put hundreds of families split between two countries in a delicate situation.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The children will no longer be able to come legally to the U.S. Of course, they can still attempt to cross without authorization and then either request asylum or try to navigate the border region without being detained or injured — just the kind of dangerous illegal immigration that the CAM program was meant to discourage. (And if the children do cross the border, as ProPublica recently reported, they could expose their parents to an investigation for child smuggling.)</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Ending the program would force desperate children into the arms of smugglers and traffickers because they don’t have a safe and orderly way to get to the U.S.,” said Lisa Frydman, a vice president of Kids In Need Of Defense, an immigration advocacy group. “This administration is giving the unconscionable message that Central American children are not welcome here for protection.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Refugee organizations were alerted to the impending demise of CAM two weeks ago by State Department officials, according to a memo summarizing the meeting that was obtained by ProPublica.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“We were told that [the State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration] will begin winding down the CAM program in its entirety,” according to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4034380-CAM-DOS-PRM.html">the summary</a>, which circulated at one resettlement agency. “Please note that this information was conveyed to us in person (verbally) with no documentation that we can share with you at this time … the CAM refugee program will be discontinued no later than December 31, 2017, perhaps sooner.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>A State Department spokesperson said that “all aspects of the FY2018 resettlement program are under review” but added that “no decisions have been made.” Asked about the meeting with the refugee agencies, the spokesperson responded, “The State Department works closely with its resettlement partners and shares information as part of an ongoing dialogue and partnership. No formal announcement has been made to partners regarding the CAM program.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>CAM admissions had already dwindled to a trickle. In August, 19 Central American refugees <a href="http://www.wrapsnet.org/s/Refugee-Admissions-Report-2017_08_31.xls">were admitted</a>. By comparison, 160 were admitted last December, the single highest month. Over the history of the program, 1,627 refugees entered the U.S. through CAM, the overwhelming majority of them from El Salvador.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In August, the Trump administration terminated a program that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-ends-obama-era-protection-program-for-central-american-minors/2017/08/16/8101507e-82b6-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html?utm_term=.b086c044866f">served as a sort of back-up to CAM</a>. The program allowed children who failed to qualify as refugees to be allowed into the U.S. temporarily if they could show there was a compelling humanitarian reason. (Obtaining refugee status requires demonstrating a “well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.” The definition of “humanitarian” is much broader.) That program allowed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-ends-obama-era-protection-program-for-central-american-minors/2017/08/16/8101507e-82b6-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html?utm_term=.6473b05dd99e">1,465 minors</a> to travel to the U.S. before its cancellation.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>An additional 2,500 who were approved for the humanitarian program but had yet to make it to the U.S. had those approvals rescinded. “No more individuals will travel into the United States under this … program,” according to a letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency that announced the cancellation. “As such, USCIS is rescinding your condition approval.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>So far this year, Central American refugees accounted for just 1 percent of the 51,000 refugees who have been admitted to the United States. Latin America overall accounts for only 3 percent of the total.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“The CAM refugee program has been a small but an incredibly critical lifeline for Central American children,” Frydman said.</p>
|
||
<aside class="promo medium right">
|
||
|
||
|
||
<div class="story-entry">
|
||
<!-- if Featured Image -->
|
||
|
||
<div class="lead-art">
|
||
<a class="aspect-3-2" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/relatives-of-undocumented-children-caught-up-in-ice-dragnet">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170911-ICE-targeting-kids-3x2.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170911-ICE-targeting-kids-3x2.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170911-ICE-targeting-kids-3x2.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1200w/20170911-ICE-targeting-kids-3x2.jpg 1200w"/>
|
||
</a>
|
||
</div>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<!-- end if Featured Image -->
|
||
|
||
<div class="description">
|
||
<h3 class="hed"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/relatives-of-undocumented-children-caught-up-in-ice-dragnet">Relatives of Undocumented Children Caught Up in ICE Dragnet</a></h3>
|
||
<h4 class="dek">In a shift from how it operated during the Obama administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is cracking down on relatives who let undocumented kids stay with them after entering the U.S.</h4>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
|
||
|
||
</aside>
|
||
|
||
<p>The cancellation of CAM is one of many moves the Trump administration has taken to discourage immigration from Latin America.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>This month, the Trump administration announced the phaseout of DACA, a program for 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who are overwhelmingly from Mexico and Central America. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/nyregion/haiti-immigrants-trump.html?mcubz=1&_r=0">announced</a> that it will soon end protections from deportation for 50,000 Haitians, and <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-who-fled-violence-in-central-america-could-be-sent-back/">floated the possibility</a> of doing the same with 200,000 Salvadorans, 60,000 Hondurans, and 3,000 Nicaraguans by next March.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>DHS has also sought to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3889695-doc00801320170630123624.html">detain all asylum applicants</a>, who are mostly from <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4034921-PED-Affirmative-Asylum-Statistics-March-2017.html#document/p3/a375460">Venezuela and Central America</a>, until their cases are adjudicated, which can take years. And it has sought to swiftly deport all illegal border crossers, overwhelmingly Mexicans and Central Americans, to Mexico, <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-plan-deport-anyone-crossing-mexican-border-regardless-of-nationality">even if they aren’t Mexican</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The agency has endorsed slashing legal immigration by half. <a href="https://news.vice.com/story/trump-expected-to-slash-refugee-levels-to-lowest-in-a-generation">VICE reported</a> this week that next year the U.S. will accept a historically low number of refugees from around the world.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The CAM program was launched in 2014 amid an exponential surge of Central American children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, most of them claiming they had parents or other relatives in the U.S. To qualify for CAM, parents must be legally allowed to be in the U.S. and children must pass a DNA test proving they are the offspring of the person or people in question. (The tests cost the families <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4034429-CIS-Ombudsman-Recommendation-on-the-CAM-Refugee.html#document/p39/a375463">close to $600.</a>) The process takes an average of <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4034429-CIS-Ombudsman-Recommendation-on-the-CAM-Refugee.html#document/p20/a375464">13 months</a> and about <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4034429-CIS-Ombudsman-Recommendation-on-the-CAM-Refugee.html#document/p46/a375465">75 percent</a> of the refugee applications were denied.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>It’s unclear how many applications are pending, but the number is <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4034429-CIS-Ombudsman-Recommendation-on-the-CAM-Refugee.html#document/p18/a375462">likely to be in the thousands</a>, based on figures from 2016. It’s also unclear what will happen to pending applications once the cancellation of the program takes effect.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Usually, there is an attempt to have an orderly wind down and people who would be in the pipeline would be completed, their cases would be completed,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and a commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under Bill Clinton. “But we’ve certainly seen in others aspects of what the new administration has done, that they haven’t necessarily being so orderly.”</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6787578.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Immigration</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-14T15:45:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Marcelo Rochabrun</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>Rethinking the ‘Infrastructure’ Discussion Amid a Blitz of Hurricanes</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6778986</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/rethinking-the-infrastructure-discussion-amid-a-blitz-of-hurricanes#134554</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/andrew-revkin">Andrew Revkin</a> </p>
|
||
<p>The wonky words infrastructure and resilience have circulated widely of late, particularly since Hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck paralyzing, costly blows in two of America’s fastest-growing states.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Resilience is a property traditionally defined as the ability to bounce back. A host of engineers and urban planners have long warned this trait is sorely lacking in America’s brittle infrastructure.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Many such experts say the disasters in the sprawling suburban and petro-industrial landscape around Houston and along the crowded coasts of Florida reinforce the urgent idea that resilient infrastructure is needed more than ever, particularly as human-driven climate change helps drive extreme weather.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The challenge in prompting change — broadening the classic definition of “infrastructure,” and investing in initiatives aimed at adapting to a turbulent planet — is heightened by partisan divisions over climate policy and development.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Of course, there’s also the question of money. The country’s infrastructure is ailing already. A national civil engineering group has surveyed the nation’s bridges, roads, dams, transit systems and more and awarded <a href="https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/">a string of D or D+ grades</a> since 1998. The same group has estimated that the country will be several trillion dollars short of what’s needed to harden and rebuild and modernize our infrastructure over the next decade.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>For fresh or underappreciated ideas, ProPublica reached out to a handful of engineers, economists and policy analysts focused on reducing risk on a fast-changing planet.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="http://www.hoover.org/profiles/alice-hill">Alice Hill</a>, who directed resilience policy for the National Security Council in the Obama administration, said the wider debate over cutting climate-warming emissions may have distracted people from promptly pursuing ways to reduce risks and economic and societal costs from natural disasters.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>She and several other experts said a first step is getting past the old definition of resilience as bouncing back from a hit, which presumes a community needs simply to recover.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“I don’t think of resilience in the traditional sense, in cutting how long it takes to turn the lights back on,” said Brian Bledsoe, the director of the <a href="http://engineering.uga.edu/research/centers/IRIS">Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems</a> at the University of Georgia. “Resilience is seizing an opportunity to move into a state of greater adaptability and preparedness — not just going back to the status quo.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In thinking about improving the country’s infrastructure, and provoking real action, Bledsoe and others say, language matters.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Bledsoe, for instance, is exploring new ways to communicate flood risk in words and maps. His institute is testing replacements for the tired language of 1-in-100 or 1-in-500-year floods. A 100-year flood has a 1 in 4 chance of occurring in the 30-year span of a typical home mortgage, he said, adding that’s the kind of time scale that gets people’s attention.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Visual cues matter, too, he said. On conventional maps, simple lines marking a floodplain boundary often are interpreted as separating safe zones and those at risk, Bledsoe said. But existing models of water flows don’t provide the full range of possible outcomes: “A 50-year rain can produce a 100-year flood if it falls on a watershed that’s already soaked or on snowpack or if it coincides with a storm surge.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“The bright line on a map is an illusion,” he said, particularly in flat places like Houston, where a slight change in flood waters can result in far more widespread inundation. Risk maps should reflect that uncertainty, and wider threat.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="http://geology.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/pinter.php">Nicholas Pinter</a>, a University of California, Davis, geoscientist who studies flood risk and water management, said that Florida is well-situated to build more wisely after this disaster because it already has a statewide <a href="http://www.floridadisaster.org/Recovery/documents/Post%20Disaster%20Redevelopment%20Planning%20Guidebook%20Lo.pdf">post-disaster redevelopment plan</a> and requires coastal communities to have their own.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>It’s more typical to have short-term recovery plans — for digging out and getting the lights back on, as 20,000 utility workers are scurrying to do right now.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The advantage of having an established protocol for redevelopment, he said, is it trims delays.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Draw up plans when the skies are blue and pull them off the shelf,” he said of how having rebuilding protocols in place can limit repeating mistakes. “That fast response cuts down on the horrible lag time in which people typically rebuild in place.”</p>
|
||
<figure class="image large left">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170913-resilience-infrastructure-inline.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170913-resilience-infrastructure-inline.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170913-resilience-infrastructure-inline.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170913-resilience-infrastructure-inline.jpg 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170913-resilience-infrastructure-inline.jpg 2000w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>The rebuilt levee wall that was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana
|
||
<span class="credit">(Chris Graythen/Getty Images)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>In a warming climate, scientists see <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-already-driving-increases-in-rainfall-extremes-1.19508">increasing potential for epic deluges</a> like the one that swamped Houston and last year’s <a href="https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/how-an-inland-brown-ocean-and-climate-change-may-have-fueled-louisianas-deadly-flood">devastating rains around Baton Rouge, Louisiana</a>. How can the federal government more responsibly manage such environmental threats?</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/08/30/national-flood-insurance-program-harvey-who-gets-to-rebuild/">Many people point</a> to the <a href="https://www.fema.gov/national-flood-insurance-program">National Flood Insurance Program</a>, which was created to boost financial resilience in flood zones, but has been criticized from just about every political and technical vantage point as too often working to subsidize, instead of mitigate, vulnerability.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/us/politics/popular-flood-insurance-law-is-target-of-both-political-parties.html?mcubz=0">has happened periodically</a> before, pressure is building on Congress to get serious about fixing the program (a reauthorization deadline was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/politics/senate-harvey-irma-aid.html?mcubz=0&_r=0">just pushed from this month</a> toward the end of the year).</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>How this debate plays out will have an important impact on infrastructure resilience, said Pinter of the University of California, Davis. If incentives remain skewed in favor of dangerous and sprawling development, he said, that just expands where roads, wires, pipelines and other connecting systems have to be built. “Public infrastructure is there in service of populations,” he said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>He also said the lack of federal guidance has led to deeply uneven enforcement of floodplain building at the state level, with enormous disparities around the country resulting in more resilient states, in essence, subsidizing disaster-prone development in others.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Why should California, Wyoming or Utah be paying the price for Houston, Mississippi or Alabama failing to enforce the National Flood Insurance Program? ” he said. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Bledsoe, at the University of Georgia, said there’s no need to wait for big changes in the program to start making progress. He said the National Flood Insurance Program has a longstanding division, the <a href="https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/1501242562358-02cc2611b6a848d7026ce17897e4a1e6/AA_June_July_2017_Update.pdf">Community Rating System</a>, that could swiftly be expanded, cutting both flood risk and budget-breaking payouts. It’s a voluntary program that reduces flood insurance rates for communities that take additional efforts beyond minimum standards to reduce flood damage to insurable property.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Despite the clear benefits, he said, only one municipality, <a href="http://www.roseville.ca.us/pw/engineering/floodplain_management/flood_facts.asp">Roseville, California</a>, has achieved <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lA5hGzo0Ko">the top level</a> of nine rankings and gotten the biggest insurance savings — 45 percent. Tulsa, Oklahoma, Fort Collins, Colorado, King County, Washington, and Pierce County, Washington, are at the second ranking and get a 40 percent rate cut. Hundreds of other municipalities are at much lower levels of preparedness.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Boosting participation is low-hanging fruit,” Bledsoe said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Some see signs that the recent blitz of hurricanes is reshaping strategies in the Trump White House. President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/08/15/remarks-president-trump-infrastructure">infrastructure agenda</a>, unveiled on August 15, centered on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/climate/flooding-infrastructure-climate-change-trump-obama.html?mcubz=0">rescinding Obama-era plans</a> to require consideration of flood risk and climate change in any federal spending for infrastructure or housing and the like. The argument was built around limiting perceived red tape.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>After <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/27/catastrophic-flooding-underway-in-houston-as-harvey-lingers-over-texas/?utm_term=.91d3839c554b">the flooding of Houston</a> less than two weeks later, Trump appointees, including Tom Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, said a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-harvey-the-trump-administration-reconsiders-flood-rules-it-just-rolled-back/2017/09/01/c3a051ea-8e56-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_trumpflood-950a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm">new plan was being developed</a> to insure federal money would not increase flood risks.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>On Monday, as Irma weakened over Georgia, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/09/11/press-briefing-pressecretary-sarah-sanders-and-homeland-security-advisor">Bossert used a White House briefing</a> to offer more hints of an emerging climate resilience policy, while notably <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/bossert-says-white-house-takes-climate-change-we-observe-seriously-not-its-cause/2017/09/11/d935b696-9723-11e7-af6a-6555caaeb8dc_video.html">avoiding accepting climate change science</a>: “What President Trump is committed to is making sure that federal dollars aren’t used to rebuild things that will be in harm’s way later or that won’t be hardened against the future predictable floods that we see. And that has to do with engineering analysis and changing conditions along eroding shorelines but also in inland water and flood-control projects.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="http://law.loyno.edu/bios/robert-r-m-verchick">Robert R.M. Verchick</a>, a Loyola University law professor who worked on climate change adaptation policy at the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama, said federal leadership is essential.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>If Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps incorporated future climate conditions, that move would send a ripple effect into real estate and insurance markets, forcing people to pay attention, he said. If the federal government required projected climate conditions to be considered when spending on infrastructure in flood-prone areas, construction practices would change, he added, noting the same pressures would drive chemical plants or other industries to have a wider margin of safety.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“None of these things will change without some form of government intervention. That’s because those who make decisions on the front end (buying property, building bridges) do not bear all the costs when things go wrong on the back end,” he wrote in an email. “And on top of that, human beings tend to discount small but important risks when it seems advantageous in the short-run.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>After a terrible storm, he said, most Americans are willing to cheer a government that helps communities recuperate. But people should also embrace the side of government that establishes rules to avoid risk and make us safer. That’s harder, he said, because such edicts can be perceived by some as impinging on personal freedom.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“But viewed correctly, sensible safeguards are part of freedom, not a retreat from it,” he said. “Freedom is having a home you can return to after the storm. Freedom is having a bridge high enough to get you to the hospital across the river. Freedom is not having your house surrounded by contaminated mud because the berm at the neighboring chemical plant failed overnight.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="https://sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience/person/thaddeus-miller">Thaddeus R. Miller</a>, an Arizona State University scientist who helps lead a national research network focused on “<a href="https://sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience/">Urban Resilience to Extreme Events</a>,” said in an email that boosting the capacity of cities to stay safe and prosperous in a turbulent climate requires a culture shift as much as hardening physical systems:</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Fundamentally, we must abandon the idea that there is a specific standard to which we can control nature and instead understand that we are creating complex and increasingly difficult-to-control systems that are part social, part ecological and part technological. These mean not just redesigning the infrastructure, but redesigning institutions and their knowledge systems.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>After the destruction and disruption from Hurricane Sandy, New York City didn’t just upgrade its power substations and subway entrances, Miller said in a subsequent phone call. The city also rebooted its agencies’ protocols and even job descriptions. “Every time a maintenance crew opens a sewer cover, fixes or installs a pipe, whether new or retrofitting, you’re thinking how to enhance its resilience,” Miller said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Miller said another key to progress, particularly when federal action is limited or stalled, is cooperation between cities or regions. Heat was not an issue in Oregon historically, Miller said, but it’s becoming one. The light rail system around Portland was designed to work with a few 90-degree days a year, he said. “The last couple of summers have seen 20-plus 90-degree days,” he said, causing copper wires carrying power for the trains to sag and steel rails to expand in <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2017/08/free_rides_wednesday_on_trimet.html">ways that have disrupted train schedules</a>. Similar rail systems in the Southwest deal with such heat routinely, said Miller, who has worked in both regions. The more crosstalk, the better the outcome, he said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“At the broadest level, we need to think about risks and how infrastructure is built to withstand them at a landscape level,” Miller added. “We can longer commit to evaluating the impacts and risks of a single project in isolation against a retrospective, stationary understanding of risk (e.g., the 100-year flood we’ve been hearing so much about.)”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>He said that an emerging alternative, “safe-to-fail” design, is more suited to situations where factors contributing to extreme floods or other storm impacts can’t be fully anticipated. “Safe-to-fail infrastructure might allow flooding, but in ways that are designed for,” he said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>(With an Arizona State colleague, Mikhail Chester, Miller offered more details in a commentary published last week by The Conversation website, laying out “<a href="https://theconversation.com/6-rules-for-rebuilding-infrastructure-in-an-era-of-unprecedented-weather-events-83129">six rules for rebuilding infrastructure in an era of ‘unprecedented’ weather events</a>.”)</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="http://deborahbrosnan.com/principals.html">Deborah Brosnan</a>, an environmental and <a href="http://archives.esf.org/media-centre/ext-single-news/article/extreme-geohazards-reducing-the-disaster-risk-and-increasing-resilience-1082.html">disaster risk</a> consultant, said the challenge in making a shift to integrating changing risks into planning and investments is enormous, even when a community has a devastating shock such as a hurricane or flood or both:</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“It requires a radical shift in how we incorporate variability in our planning and regulations,” she said. “This can and will be politically difficult. New regulations like California fire and earthquake codes and Florida’s building codes are typically enacted after an event, and from a reactive ‘make sure this doesn’t happen again’ perspective. The past event creates a ‘standard’ against which to regulate. Regulations and codes require a standard that can be upheld, otherwise decisions can be arbitrary and capricious. For climate change, non-stationarity would involve creating regulations that take account of many different factors and where variability has to be included. Variability (uncertainy) is the big challenge for these kinds of approaches.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="http://blogs.worldbank.org/team/st-phane-hallegatte">Stephane Hallegatte</a>, the lead economist at the Word Bank’s <a href="https://www.gfdrr.org/">Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery</a>, has written or co-written a host of reports on <a href="https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/1813-9450-6193">strategies for limiting impacts</a> of climate change and disasters, <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25335">particularly on the poor</a>. When asked in an email exchange what success would look like, he said the World Bank, in various recent reports, has stressed the importance of managing disaster risks along two tracks: both designing and investing to limit the most frequent hard knocks and then making sure the tools and services are available to help communities recover when a worst-case disaster strikes.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>He added: “Facing a problem, people tend to do one thing to manage it, and then forget about it. (‘I face floods; I build a dike; I’m safe.’) We are trying to work against this, by having risk prevention and contingent planning done together.”</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6778986.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>The Trump Administration</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-13T21:20:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Andrew Revkin</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>ProPublica and Texas Tribune Project on Dangers of Hurricanes to Houston a Finalist for North American Digital Media Award</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6776392</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Wed, 13 Sep 2017 16:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/atpropublica/propublica-and-texas-tribune-project-on-hurricanes-houston-finalist-for-north-american-digital-media-award#134548</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/propublica">ProPublica</a> </p>
|
||
<p>The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers announced today that “<a href="https://projects.propublica.org/houston-cypress/">Boomtown, Flood Town</a>,” a collaboration between ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, is a finalist for the North American Digital Media Award in the Best Data Visualization category.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The multimedia project — by a team of local reporters and data journalists including ProPublica’s Al Shaw, along with The Texas Tribune’s Kiah Collier, and Neena Satija of the Texas Tribune and Reveal — was part of a series that presciently showed the risk to Houston of hurricanes and floods with the potential to devastate the region.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Published last year, the project served as an interactive, immersive call to action before such a storm hit, using excellent science journalism and cutting-edge technology to tell the story in a new way. It took a closer look at how the loss of undeveloped prairie and wetlands was making areas that had not flooded in decades more prone to inundation. The story also exposed the dangers of a bureaucratic nightmare in Houston: a process plagued by politicians passing the buck, and by the strange psychology of large disasters, which are often considered academic problems until it’s far too late.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>With the recent catastrophic flooding in Houston from Hurricane Harvey, the reporting of “Boomtown, Flood Town” is increasingly urgent. This week, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner gave his strongest endorsement to date for <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/houston-officials-hope-harvey-convinces-congress-to-fund-coastal-barrier">constructing a physical barrier to protect the region</a> from deadly storm surges during hurricanes.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Winners for the North American Digital Media Awards will be announced in October. Read <a href="https://events.wan-ifra.org/events/north-america-digital-media-awards-2017/content/1974">more about the award here</a>.</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6776392.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject/>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-13T16:11:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by ProPublica</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>Houston Officials Hope Harvey Convinces Congress to Fund Coastal Barrier</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6768751</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Tue, 12 Sep 2017 22:19:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/houston-officials-hope-harvey-convinces-congress-to-fund-coastal-barrier#134536</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <span class="name">Kiah Collier</span>, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/">The Texas Tribune</a>, and <span class="name">Neena Satija</span>, The Texas Tribune and Reveal </p>
|
||
<p>HOUSTON — Houston Mayor <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/sylvester-turner/">Sylvester Turner</a> on Tuesday gave his strongest endorsement to date for constructing a physical coastal barrier to protect the region from deadly storm surge during hurricanes.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Though such a barrier system would not have guarded against the unrelenting and unprecedented rain Hurricane Harvey dumped on the area, Turner — one of the region’s last leaders to endorse the so-called “coastal spine” concept — said at a Tuesday news conference that he believes it is crucial. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“We cannot talk about rebuilding” from Harvey “if we do not build the coastal spine,” he said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>With Harvey — which was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it reached Houston — “we again dodged the bullet.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Constructing such a system has been discussed since 2008, when Hurricane Ike shifted course at the last minute, narrowly sparing populated, low-lying coastal communities like Clear Lake and the Houston Ship Channel — home to the nation’s largest refining and petrochemical complex — from a massive storm surge. Scientists have modeled worst-case scenario storms that make clear the potential for devastation, which <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/houston/">The Texas Tribune and ProPublica detailed extensively</a> in a 2016 investigation. They also have urged local, state and federal elected officials to pursue infrastructure solutions.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Last year those scientists and officials told The Texas Tribune and ProPublica that a catastrophic storm likely would have to hit Houston before they could convince Congress to pay for such an endeavor — estimated to cost some $5.8 billion for the Houston area alone and at least $11 billion for the entire six-county coastal region.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Turner and other leaders are clearly hoping Harvey fits the bill.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>They have suggested that the federal government could provide funding for the storm surge barrier and a variety of other storm protection measures as part of an overall Harvey relief package. Nicknamed the “Ike Dike,” the barrier proposal was first offered up by Texas A&M University at Galveston in 2009.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>But the $15 billion Congress has approved for Texas so far can’t be spent on a coastal barrier; the money can only go toward rehabilitating flooded areas. That means local and state officials will either have to depend on Congress to fund something completely separate — a scenario many are doubtful of — or cobble together other funding. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>U.S. Sen. <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/john-cornyn/">John Cornyn</a>, R-Texas, and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush have been leading an effort to secure federal funding for the coastal spine. In April, Bush and several other officials, including Turner, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/04/25/texas-politicians-business-leaders-urge-fed/">wrote</a> to President Donald Trump urging his support.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>But the Ike Dike would only protect coastal areas from catastrophic storm surge. It would do nothing to prevent flooding damage from torrential rain, which is almost entirely responsible for the damage Houstonians suffered from Harvey. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“They thought [the coastal spine] would be the answer to a lot of these problems,” said Adrian Garcia, a former city councilman and Harris County sheriff. “And obviously it is not.” </p>
|
||
<aside class="promo medium right">
|
||
|
||
|
||
<div class="story-entry">
|
||
<!-- if Featured Image -->
|
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|
||
<div class="lead-art">
|
||
<a class="aspect-3-2" href="http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/houston-srlp">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/externals/_threeTwo400w/20170901-houston-flood-insurance-3x2.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/externals/_threeTwo400w/20170901-houston-flood-insurance-3x2.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/externals/_threeTwo800w/20170901-houston-flood-insurance-3x2.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/externals/_threeTwo1200w/20170901-houston-flood-insurance-3x2.jpg 1200w"/>
|
||
</a>
|
||
</div>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<!-- end if Featured Image -->
|
||
|
||
<div class="description">
|
||
<h3 class="hed"><a href="http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/houston-srlp">Where the Government Spends to Keep People in Flood-Prone Houston Neighborhoods</a></h3>
|
||
<h4 class="dek">The government has shelled out $265 million for flood claims on 1,155 severe repetitive loss properties in the flood insurance program in Harris County.</h4>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
|
||
|
||
</aside>
|
||
|
||
<p>Other flood protection ideas — either underfunded or long-abandoned — have received renewed attention since Harvey.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>On Tuesday, Turner joined local officials in expressing support for a <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/09/11/texas-gop-leaders-pursuing-high-dollar-flood-infrastructure-projects/">long-delayed reservoir project</a> that experts say would’ve saved thousands of Houston homes from flooding during Harvey, along with three bayou-widening projects estimated to cost a combined $130 million.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Turner said the city shouldn’t have to choose one over the other as it seeks federal funding. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“I don’t think we need to pick one. ... We know we need another reservoir,” he said. “We just need to step up and do that. The same thing with the coastal spine.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>A spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/michael-mccaul/">Michael McCaul</a> said he has been working with FEMA, Gov. Greg Abbott and local officials to identify options for flood mitigation.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Turner’s advocacy for the coastal barrier concept is relatively new. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Early last year, amid the Texas Tribune/ProPublica investigation, Turner declined to discuss the need for such a barrier. Instead, the city sent statements dismissing the potential impacts — and not indicating whether Turner supported such a project, which dozens of area city councils had enthusiastically endorsed.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Only a small portion of the city of Houston is in areas at risk for major storm surge,” the statement said. “Consequently, hurricane-force wind poses the major threat for the majority of the city.” </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Reminded of a dire scenario that projected a 34-foot storm surge that put downtown Houston underwater, Turner’s office provided a follow-up statement acknowledging that the issue “continues to be a concern.” It also placed the onus on the federal government to take the lead on a coastal barrier project.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>A few months later, in August 2016, Turner wrote to state leaders studying the coastal barrier concept <a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/Turner-backs-Ike-Dike-storm-surge-protection-9138125.php">and said he supported it</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>On Tuesday, Turner spoke passionately about the impact Hurricane Ike could have had — and the impact Harvey did have — on the region’s industrial complex and the national economy. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“When Hurricane Ike hit in 2008 there were $30 billion in damages,” he said. If Ike’s direction hadn’t changed “we could have lost refineries, jet fuel and the entire Houston Ship Channel, not only destroying the jobs of many Houstonians, but there would have been an impact on the nation as a whole.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>During Harvey, Turner said, “the Houston port did close and business was shut down and the country as a whole was impacted.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“That was a tropical storm,” he added. “Can you imagine if Hurricane Harvey had come closer, what the devastating effects would be?” </p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6768751.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>PoliticsHell and High Water</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-12T22:19:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Kiah Collier, The Texas Tribune, and Neena Satija, The Texas Tribune and Reveal</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis to Receive Lovejoy Award</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6767465</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Tue, 12 Sep 2017 19:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/atpropublica/alec-macgillis-to-receive-lovejoy-award#134530</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/propublica">ProPublica</a> </p>
|
||
<p>ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis will be the recipient of the 2017 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award. Sponsored by Colby College, the honor recognizes a member of the news profession who has produced courageous journalism.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>MacGillis was selected for his deep reporting on a wide range of policy issues, including how one small biotech company has shaped <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/vivitrol-opiate-crisis-and-criminal-justice">opioid treatment in the criminal justice system</a>; <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-beleaguered-tenants-of-kushnerville">corrupt housing practices</a>; and <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/conocophillips-lobbying-long-game-won-fight-drill-alaska-wilderness">the influence of the oil industry</a> and other corporations on public policy.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“The need for a free press and a commitment to truth in reporting has never been more important,” said Colby President David A. Greene. “We are honored to recognize Alec MacGillis for his courageous and unyielding efforts to reveal truths that have been carefully shielded from public scrutiny.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Past winners of the Lovejoy Award, which has been presented annually since 1952, include Katherine Boo, David Halberstam and ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, who received the honor in 2013. MacGillis will be given the award, along with an honorary doctoral degree from Colby College, on Oct. 2. Read <a href="http://www.colby.edu/news/2017/09/11/propublicas-alec-macgillis-to-receive-2017-lovejoy-award/">more about the award here</a>.</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6767465.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject/>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-12T19:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by ProPublica</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>Health Insurance Is Big and Complicated. Help Us Understand It.</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6765329</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Tue, 12 Sep 2017 15:41:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/help-us-understand-health-insurance#134525</guid>
|
||
<description><.
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6765329.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Health Care</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-12T15:41:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by ProPublica</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>Relatives of Undocumented Children Caught Up in ICE Dragnet</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6751977</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/relatives-of-undocumented-children-caught-up-in-ice-dragnet#134496</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/hannah-dreier">Hannah Dreier</a> </p>
|
||
<p>This summer, a Kansas City man named Edwin got a call from immigration officials. They had picked up his nephew at the southern border and wanted to release the teen into his care. So Edwin went online and bought a bed.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Later that week, he was contacted again, this time by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detective who knocked at his door. The agent gave Edwin a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3988751-ICE-Sponsor-Notice.html">letter</a> saying he needed to come to headquarters for an interview about three federal crimes: conspiracy, visa fraud and human smuggling.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Across the country, people like Edwin who have taken in young undocumented relatives are being swept up in what ICE calls a crackdown on guardians who pay human smugglers. More than 400 people were arrested over the course of two months this summer as part of the new approach. Others are still dodging ICE interviews, have agreed to go through deportation proceedings or have gone on the run. Some of those affected admit that they paid “coyotes” to reunite them with their young children. But many are collateral damage: People who just happened to be in the house when ICE showed up, or relatives who agreed to take in teens after they traveled to the U.S. on their own.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“The message is getting out: Don’t sponsor someone if you’re here illegally, or you’re going to get in trouble,” said Claude Arnold, a former ICE Homeland Security Investigations special agent who supports the new policy. “The idea is to have a deterrent effect, so when a teenager says, ‘Uncle, I can pay my own way, but can I stay with you?’ the uncle is going to say, ‘No way.’”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Edwin, who asked that his last name be withheld because of possible pending criminal charges, has been living in the U.S. for more than 15 years and says he never paid anyone to help his nephew cross the border. He points out that he has done everything by the book since emigrating from El Salvador to Missouri in 2001. He immediately got a job at a dry cleaning company and obtained <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status">Temporary Protected Status</a>, which allows him to live and work in the U.S. so long as he keeps a clean criminal record. He doesn’t follow the news and didn’t know he was risking deportation by agreeing to take in his nephew. But he said it wouldn’t have mattered; he couldn’t have refused to welcome his sister’s son.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“My nephew is grown and he makes his own choices. Everyone pays their own way. But he’s my family and it’s my duty to take him in,” Edwin said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Edwin’s nephew Wilbur lived in Kansas City with Temporary Protected Status himself as a child, but his parents decided to take him back to El Salvador when he was 6. He said he made up his mind to return to the U.S. after graduating high school this spring because he felt threatened by gangs. Wilbur took a bus across Guatemala, traveled through Mexico by pickup truck, then crossed into Texas in the back of a tractor trailer a month before his 18th birthday. He was picked up almost immediately by U.S. officials.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>About 90 percent of minors detained at the southern border are eventually <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/resource/unaccompanied-alien-children-released-to-sponsors-by-state">turned over</a> to a family member. It’s a system intended to spare the state from having to take care of children, and allow young people to live in normal homes while their visa and asylum claims work through the courts.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Under President Barack Obama, ICE was instructed not to go after people who came forward to claim relatives, even if they were in the U.S. illegally. Guardians were told they had no reason to fear revealing themselves to authorities. Under President Donald Trump, that policy has been reversed.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Trump administration officials say it’s less of a policy change than a commonsensical return to the enforcement of existing immigration laws. In a <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/17_0220_S1_Implementing-the-Presidents-Border-Security-Immigration-Enforcement-Improvement-Policies.pdf">February memo</a>, then-Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said that while all immigration laws should be enforced, it’s especially important to go after people “directly or indirectly” involved in smuggling, because the journey north can be so dangerous for children.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Regardless of the desires for family reunification, or conditions in other countries, the smuggling or trafficking of alien children is intolerable,” he wrote.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Edwin said he felt bewildered when an immigration detective showed up at his door one morning in July, and was further confused by the letter instructing him to come to ICE headquarters the following week to talk about crimes related to smuggling.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Because Edwin has protected status, he was able to take the letter and go on with his day. For people in the country illegally, things have been playing out much differently.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>A couple living in New Mexico fled the state after ICE agents turned up in August asking about a nephew they had recently taken in. They told their attorney that they hadn’t even known the high school junior was on his way up from Guatemala.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In Tennessee, two ICE agents came with pistols and flak jackets to arrest a mother who hid in her trailer home. The mother said she had no idea her 16-year-old daughter was coming from Honduras. The agents left once others in the trailer park started taking photos.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which has a contract from the U.S. government to help place unaccompanied minors with relatives, has seen cases in recent months of cousins and half-siblings swept up in the crackdown. In June, three members of a single Missouri family that had been working with the agency were put in deportation proceedings after ICE came around asking about smuggling.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In all, more than 400 people were arrested between late June and late August as part of what ICE describes as an enforcement surge to bolster the strategy of going after guardians. The great majority of those 400 were charged with immigration violations, not smuggling-related crimes.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>A group of Democratic members of Congress <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3988752-Letter-to-Kelly-on-ICE-Targetting-Sponsors-of-UAC.html">asked</a> ICE in July for specifics about the change in approach, including the protocol for deciding which sponsors would be targeted, but have yet to receive any answers.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>For now, Edwin is ignoring his summons. He said that when he failed to appear at ICE headquarters, an agent responded by going to the dry cleaner where he works to review his employment verification papers. He is hoping the agent loses interest, but no longer feels like he knows what to expect.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“I’ve been here more than a decade and I’ve never had a single problem with the authorities. Now, it’s like the government is changing everything around,” he said. “Now, everything is dangerous.”</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6751977.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Immigration</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-11T12:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Hannah Dreier</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>Familiares de niños indocumentados atrapados en operaciones anti-tráfico humano</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6751978</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/familiares-ninos-indocumentados-atrapados-operaciones-anti-trafico-humano#134502</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
por <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/hannah-dreier">Hannah Dreier</a> </p>
|
||
<p>Este verano, Edwin, un hombre de Kansas City, recibió una llamada de funcionarios de inmigración que le informaron que habían recogido a su sobrino en la frontera sur. Querían liberar al adolescente y entregarlo a su cuidado. Por esto, Edwin fue al internet y compró una cama.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Más tarde en esa semana fue contactado nuevamente, esta vez por un detective de la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas, quien tocó a su puerta. El agente le dio una <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3988751-ICE-Sponsor-Notice.html">carta</a> a Edwin que decía que necesitaba ir a la sede principal para una entrevista sobre tres delitos federales: conspiración, fraude de visas, y contrabando de personas.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>A través del país, personas como Edwin que han acogido a parientes indocumentados están siendo arrasados por lo que ICE llama una represión contra los guardianes que pagan a los contrabandistas humanos.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Más de 400 personas fueron arrestadas en el transcurso de dos meses este verano, como parte del nuevo enfoque. Otros aún siguen esquivando las entrevistas de ICE, han aceptado pasar por los procedimientos de deportación, o se han dado a la fuga. Algunos de los afectados admiten que pagaron a los “coyotes” para reunirlos con sus hijos menores. Pero muchos son daños colaterales: Personas que estaban en la casa cuando ICE llegó, o parientes que acordaron recibir a adolescentes después de que viajaron solos a los Estados Unidos.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“El mensaje queda claro: No apoyen a nadie si están aquí de manera ilegal, o tendrán problemas”, dijo Claude Arnold, un agente especial de ICE jubilado quien apoya la nueva ley. “La idea es tener un efecto disuasorio, por lo tanto, cuando un adolescente dice: ‘Tío, puedo pagar mi propio viaje, ¿puedo quedarme con ustedes?’ el tío va a decir ‘No, de ninguna manera’”.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Edwin, quien pidió que no se mencionara su apellido debido a posibles cargos penales pendientes, ha vivido en los Estados Unidos por más de 15 años y dice que nunca le pagó a nadie para ayudar a su sobrino a cruzar la frontera. Señala que ha hecho todo de manera legal desde que emigró desde El Salvador a Missouri en el 2001. Apenas entró, consiguió un trabajo en una tintorería y obtuvo <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status">Estatus de Protección Temporal</a>, que le permite vivir y trabajar en los Estados Unidos mientras mantenga un récord criminal limpio. Él no sigue las noticias y no sabía que se estaba arriesgando a ser deportado por aceptar recibir a su sobrino. Pero dijo que no le habría importado, ya que él no podía haberle negado la ayuda al hijo de su hermana.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Mi sobrino esta grande y él toma sus propias decisiones. Todo el mundo hace su propio camino. Pero él es mi familia y es mi deber ayudarlo”, dijo Edwin.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Wilbur, el sobrino de Edwin, vivió en Kansas City con Estatus de Protección Temporal cuando era niño, pero sus padres decidieron llevarlo de regreso a El Salvador cuando tenía seis años. Él dijo que tomó la decisión de regresar a los Estados Unidos después de graduarse de la escuela secundaria esta primavera, porque se sentía amenazado por las pandillas. Wilbur tomó un bus a través de Guatemala, viajó a través de México en una camioneta pickup, y cruzó la frontera de Texas en la parte de atrás del remolque de un tractor un mes antes de cumplir 18 años. Fue capturado casi inmediatamente por los oficiales estadounidenses.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Alrededor del 90 por ciento de los menores detenidos en la frontera sur se <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/resource/unaccompanied-alien-children-released-to-sponsors-by-state">entregan</a> finalmente a un miembro de la familia. Es un sistema diseñado para liberar al estado de tener que cuidar a los niños y permitir a los jóvenes vivir en viviendas normales mientras sus solicitudes de asilo y visa se procesan a través de los tribunales.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Bajo la orden del Presidente Barack Obama, ICE fue instruido a no perseguir a los adultos que venía a reclamar parientes, incluso si ellos estaban en los Estados Unidos ilegalmente. A los guardianes se les dijo que no tenía razón alguna para temer revelarse a las autoridades. Bajo el presidente Donald Trump, esa política se ha reversado.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Los funcionarios de la administración de Donald Trump dicen que es menos un cambio de política que un retorno sensato a la aplicación de las leyes de inmigración. En un <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/17_0220_S1_Implementing-the-Presidents-Border-Security-Immigration-Enforcement-Improvement-Policies.pdf">memorándum</a> enviado en febrero, el entonces Secretario de Seguridad Nacional, John F. Kelly, dijo que aunque todas las leyes de inmigración deberían ser obligatorias, es especialmente importante ir tras la gente involucrada “directa o indirectamente” en el contrabando humano, porque el viaje al norte puede ser muy peligroso para los niños.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Independientemente de los deseos de reunificación familiar, o de las condiciones en otros países, el contrabando o el tráfico de niños extranjeros es intolerable”, escribió.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Edwin se sintió desconcertado cuando un detective de inmigración se apareció en su puerta una mañana en julio, y se sintió aún mucho más confundido por la carta en la que le pide ir a la sede de ICE la semana siguiente para hablar sobre los delitos relacionados con el tráfico humano.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Debido a que Edwin tiene un estatus protegido, pudo tomar la carta y continuar con su día. Para las personas que se encuentran de manera ilegal en el país, las cosas han sido muy distintas.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Una pareja que vivía en Nuevo Mexico huyó del estado después de que los agentes del ICE se aparecieron en agosto, preguntando por un sobrino que habían recibido recientemente. Ellos le dijeron a su abogado que ni siquiera sabían que el joven en la escuela secundaria estaba en camino desde Guatemala.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>En Tennessee, dos agentes del ICE llegaron con pistolas y chalecos antibalas a arrestar a una madre que se escondió en su casa móvil. La madre dijo que ella no tenía ni idea de que su hija de 16 años estaba en camino desde Honduras. Los agentes abandonaron el sitio cuando los vecinos comenzaron a tomar fotos.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>El Servicio Luterano de Inmigración y Refugiados, el cual tiene un contrato con el gobierno de los EE.UU. para ayudar a unir a los menores no acompañados con sus familiares, ha visto casos en los últimos meses de primos y medio hermanos detenidos en a la ofensiva. En junio, tres miembros de una sola familia en Missouri que habían estado trabajando con la agencia fueron puestos en proceso de deportación después de que ICE les preguntó sobre el tráfico de indocumentados.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>En total, más de 400 personas fueron detenidas entre finales de junio y finales de agosto, como parte de lo que ICE describe como una oleada de implementación para reforzar la estrategia de ir trás de los guardianes. La gran mayoría de esas 400 personas fueron acusadas de violaciones de leyes de inmigración, no de delitos relacionados con el tráfico de indocumentados.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>En julio, un grupo de miembros demócratas del Congreso <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3988752-Letter-to-Kelly-on-ICE-Targetting-Sponsors-of-UAC.html">pidieron</a> a ICE obtener detalles sobre el cambio de enfoque, pero aún no han recibido ninguna respuesta.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Por ahora, Edwin está ignorando su citación. Dijo que cuando él no compareció ante la sede de ICE, un agente respondió yendo a la tintorería donde trabaja para revisar sus documentos de empleo. Él está esperando que el agente pierda interés, pero ya no sabe que suponer.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“He estado aquí más de una década y nunca he tenido ningún problema con los oficiales. Ahora, está cambiando todo”, dijo. “Ahora, todo es peligroso”.</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6751978.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Immigration</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-11T12:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>por Hannah Dreier</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>Introducing Our Data Journalism Advisers</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6751979</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/nerds/introducing-our-data-journalism-advisers#134510</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/scott-klein">Scott Klein</a> and <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/ryann-grochowski-jones">Ryann Grochowski Jones</a> </p>
|
||
<p>It’s no secret that we like math at ProPublica. Our data team creates its own statistical models, drawing insights that support — and help guide — reporting done in more traditional ways. We feel strongly that investing in quantitative methods can help a newsroom find stories that would otherwise go unreported.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>We have four full-time data journalists, as well as a team of developer-journalists and a wider newsroom that’s full of very nerdy reporters. But despite a wide range of talents and expertise, we often find ourselves in quantitative conundrums that we need help to understand and untangle.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>That’s why today we’re announcing a new group of advisers who will help us solve our thorniest problems and do data journalism at the highest possible level. These four people will help us develop methodologies, answer practical questions, introduce us to other domain experts and be another set of eyes on the white papers we write to explain our work.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>They have diverse backgrounds and an array of areas of expertise. We’re incredibly excited to introduce them.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/"><strong>Miguel Hernán</strong></a> is the Kolokotrones professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He also teaches courses at the Harvard Medical School and Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His research focuses on what works best for treating and preventing cancer, cardiovascular disease and HIV. Hernán received his M.D. from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and an M.P.H, Dr.P.H. and M.S. from Harvard.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="http://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/cl3584/"><strong>Charles Lang</strong></a> is a visiting assistant professor in learning analytics at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He researches student learning through predictive analytics and graphical models. He received his Ed.D. from Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as a B.S. in biochemistry and B.A. in political science from the University of Melbourne, Australia.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="https://you.stonybrook.edu/somasmcp/faculty/lynch/"><strong>Heather Lynch</strong></a> is an associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University. Her work as an ecologist involves using quantitative analysis and data collection methods to research the effect climate change and fishing has had on the Antarctic penguin population. She holds a Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard, an M.A. in physics from Harvard and an A.B. in physics from Princeton.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="http://economics.ubc.ca/faculty-and-staff/marit-rehavi/"><strong>M. Marit Rehavi</strong></a> is an assistant professor of economics at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia and a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Rehavi researches influences on the decision-making process in medicine, politics and law by exploring and analyzing large datasets. She received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.Sc. in economics and economic history from the London School of Economics and an A.B. in economics from Harvard.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Our hope is that these experts will work both individually and as a group to help guide the in-depth data analyses that we’re known for. This is the first time we’re attempting such an advisory group (in fact, it might be the first time any newsroom has done this), so it’s going to be a bit of an experiment. We’re thrilled to see what comes of it.</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6751979.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject/>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-11T12:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Scott Klein and Ryann Grochowski Jones</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>How the Truth Can Get Damaged in a Hurricane, Too</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6726888</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Fri, 08 Sep 2017 17:38:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-truth-can-get-damaged-in-a-hurricane-too#134487</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/andrew-revkin">Andrew Revkin</a> </p>
|
||
<p>The disinformation and falsehoods that can accompany breaking news online — involving terror attacks or national elections — have become a familiar plague in recent years. Big weather stories, it now seems clear, are not immune.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>On Twitter, Facebook and a handful of other venues, hundreds of thousands of people in recent days have clicked or shared items with headlines warning that Hurricane Irma was <a href="http://www.snopes.com/hurricane-irma-track-become-category-6-storm/">poised to become a Category 6 storm</a> (on the <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php">five-level Saffir-Simpson scale</a> of hurricane intensity) that “<a href="http://archive.is/HtSo1#selection-755.74-755.113">could wipe entire cities off the map</a>.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The fact-checking website Snopes <a href="http://www.snopes.com/hurricane-irma-track-become-category-6-storm/">made quick work of debunking that claim</a>. Still, the National Weather Service felt moved to post <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NWS/posts/10156218983739041:0">warnings about fake forecasts</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Meanwhile, Conservative News Today posted a Facebook Live video of <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/09/07/hurricane-irma-fake-facebook-live-videos/#hDRcV3iv7SqV">a bus</a> being toppled by Irma and a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Conservativetoday/videos/1643237435708167/">ship in enormous seas</a> said to be carrying “hurricane chasers” heading into Irma. Neither was true. With <a href="https://twitter.com/TomClarkeC4/status/905827578048589829">help from social media</a>, ProPublica tracked the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Aow2ErSP3dQ">original video</a> of the endangered ship back to January 2013; it was shot in a terrible storm 60 miles or so off the coast of Portugal.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Over the last two weeks, there have also been a host of simplistic proclamations online about the role of human-driven climate change in Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Harvey, both overstating and discounting it. As Irma approaches Florida, the issues with sifting fake and real news become more consequential.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>With all that in mind, ProPublica reached out to <a href="https://janelytv.contently.com/">Jane Lytvynenko</a>, a Toronto-based journalist who’s been covering misinformation and disinformation for BuzzFeed since November and previously covered the media for <a href="http://www.canadalandshow.com/author/jane-lytvynenko/">Canadaland</a>. On Wednesday, Lytvynenko posted what has become <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/janelytvynenko/irma-misinfo?utm_term=.gyKVlJPXde#.mfJ1g4l7qy">a running, and growing, list of Hurricane Irma fakery and disinformation</a>.</p>
|
||
<figure class="tweet x-large left">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">We're starting to see fake images of Irma impact. This one is from a 2014 hurricane in Mexico. Round-up here: <a href="https://t.co/n4LgjLLWP2">https://t.co/n4LgjLLWP2</a> <a href="https://t.co/wTCtovJFp4">pic.twitter.com/wTCtovJFp4</a></p>— Jane Lytvynenko (@JaneLytv) <a href="https://twitter.com/JaneLytv/status/905522923838087169">September 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
|
||
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>Here’s a condensed and edited version of our brief chat, followed by some reliable sources of information on Irma and other extreme storms.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Did you move to BuzzFeed specifically to cover mis/disinformation?</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<p>I did. We look at online mis/disinformation and how it spreads. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Does the flow of misinformation around weather events or climate change seem different in some ways to that around other breaking news?</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In some ways, misinformation around weather is a little different. We see a lot of people share old photos or images seemingly by accident, without malice or a political agenda. During Harvey, many of the hyper-partisan and fake news sites that post false information were quiet during the first couple of days. That’s not the case during terror attacks or political events, for example. In those cases, the spin and misinformation come very quickly and each side tends to settle on a few key messages. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>At the same time, what unites misinformation around weather and politics is emotion. If you scroll through fake news headlines, you’ll see that most of them want to inflame a sense of anger or injustice. Sometimes that means trash-talking a politician, other times that means playing on racial tensions. During Harvey, for example, we saw stories about Black Lives Matter blocking emergency crews from entering the city. BLM was actually helping hurricane victims, but the fake news went viral because it inflamed people’s emotions and biases. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Do you feel like you’re whistling in a Category 6 windstorm? In other words, do you feel it’s useful to attempt this?</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Sometimes. With individual debunk posts, it’s unlikely that the person spreading misinformation will see me refuting it. At the same time, it’s an opportunity to teach the audience what to look for and how to identify misleading information. People appreciate having one go-to place in times of crisis. It’s good to see people use our posts to actively call out misinformation. That means some people still care about having a grip on reality. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Have you been fooled? I have, twice that I know of. The first time came in 2015, when I was writing a post hurriedly <a href="https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/dire-prospects-seen-when-the-full-nepal-earthquake-death-toll-is-tallied/?mcubz=0">on the Nepal earthquake</a> and included an embedded YouTube video of a sloshing hotel swimming pool that turned out to be from a previous Mexican quake. The second came August 27, when I joined those retweeting an <a href="http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/aug/29/blog-posting/fake-photo-shows-possible-climate-change-effects-n/">image of planes submerged</a> on a flooded runway — which of course turned out to be a <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/coastal-us-airports-face-increasing-threat-from-sea-level-rise-16126">bootlegged photo visualization</a> of the impacts of sea-level rise from a 2013 Climate Central article. I was <a href="https://twitter.com/Revkin/status/902239672772038658/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2Fmedia%2Fb7ef25cf12b69c91ee614b66ab76c787%3FpostId%3De5e65e56bf6c">quickly rebuked</a>.</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<p>I haven’t gotten fooled recently, but that’s because my trust levels are so low. If I read an article on an unfamiliar website, I immediately start checking for clues of it being fake — was the image stolen, was it registered recently, is it only masquerading as a legitimate source? My friends make fun of me for it, but it means I keep the fakes out of my feed. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>What drives you to pursue this as a beat?</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Misinformation can be dangerous. During a hurricane, misinformation can clog official messages from getting through. Sometimes it sways attitudes and public opinion. If people don’t know who to trust, they’ll put more faith in their own biases and that can be dangerous. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Who do you see, if anyone, as the competition on this beat?</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<p>This is a tough question because the field of misinformation is so wide. We’ve seen other mainstream publications start debunk roundups like ours, which is really great. But when it comes to the big projects (<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/inside-the-partisan-fight-for-your-news-feed">like this study we recently published</a>) we’re unique because we dedicate reporters to uncovering online misinformation trends. Some of us do nothing else. </p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
|
||
<p>For those eager to sift reality from belief-affirming fantasy, there’s plenty of accurate online guidance on hurricanes and other meteorological hazards. On Wednesday, CrowdTangle, a company making platforms for news organizations or others tracking social media, created a dashboard with the <a href="https://twitter.com/crowdtangle/status/905544802804015104">social media flow from trustworthy sources on hurricanes</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The first stop, of course, is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center for <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/">guidance on current storms</a> (including through its <a href="https://twitter.com/nhc_atlantic">@NHC_Atlantic</a> Twitter feed) and <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/">long-term patterns</a>. The federal Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory posted an invaluable primer earlier this year on <a href="https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/">hurricanes and global warming</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>To put current tropical storms in historical context, Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State University is one of the top experts. On Wednesday, he posted <a href="https://webcms.colostate.edu/tropical/media/sites/111/2017/09/Hurricane-Irma-Records.pdf">a summary of Irma superlatives</a> including the remarkable fact that this Atlantic Ocean giant had, as of Wednesday night, already become the extreme-wind endurance champion for such storms, maintaining winds of 185 miles per hour for 33 hours.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>This roundly beat 2013’s <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=82348">Typhoon Haiyan</a> in the Pacific, the previous record holder, which held such destructive velocities for 24 hours.</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6726888.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Environment</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-08T17:38:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Andrew Revkin</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>The Breakthrough: Hopelessness and Exploitation Inside Homes for Mentally Ill</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6726889</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Fri, 08 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/podcast/the-breakthrough-hopelessness-exploitation-homes-for-mentally-ill#134472</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/joaquin-sapien">Joaquin Sapien</a> </p>
|
||
<p>In the 1960s, New York began to clear out its scandal-ridden psychiatric hospitals. In their place, a new system emerged. Thousands of mentally ill New Yorkers moved into “adult homes,” large apartment complexes concentrated mostly in New York City and its surrounding suburbs. The homes were meant to provide a safer, more humane alternative to the hospitals; they were closer to where many of the patients lived, and promised modest psychiatric care and other services.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>But decades later, that grand vision had devolved into something that looked more like a nightmare.</p>
|
||
<figure class="audio small right">
|
||
<h3>Listen to the Episode</h3>
|
||
<div class="">
|
||
<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/341359627&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"></iframe>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>In 2001, New York Times metro reporter Cliff Levy spent a year investigating conditions of the homes. He found that more than 1,000 people died in a six-year period. Some threw themselves off of rooftops. Others succumbed to extreme heat, only to be found days later, decomposing in fetid rooms. He found that the homes were often staffed by unqualified workers paid a pittance to look after a population in desperate need.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Today, Cliff is a deputy managing editor at the Times. He has joined us on this episode of The Breakthrough to discuss the 2001 series, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/nyregion/BROKEN_HOMES.html?mcubz=0">Broken Homes</a>.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>He describes how he developed his own novel way of obtaining records of deaths in the facilities, and how he tracked down former workers who detailed schemes invented by the home’s operators to maximize profits. He tells us how he made cold call after cold call to reach the relatives of dead residents.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“It’s exhausting, and it’s really depressing,” Levy said in describing the effort. “And you ask yourself, like, ‘Maybe I’m just wasting my time.’ But then, at some point, you reach someone.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The stories helped prompt a class-action lawsuit, which led to a federal court order requiring New York state’s Department of Health to move as many as 4,000 mentally ill residents into their own apartments, where they can live more independently with individualized services.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>ProPublica is now examining that transition and the effort to improve conditions at the homes. Thus far, the state’s progress has been slow and controversial:</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Earlier this summer, we reported that the Department of Health is <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/independent-monitor-faults-ny-state-for-delays-in-aiding-mentally-ill">behind in its deadlines</a> to move the residents. We learned that <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-judge-sees-new-york-state-conspiracy-to-thwart-care-mentally-ill">a federal judge has accused</a> the state of trying to evade the regulations at the heart of his order by colluding with industry. We spent parts of <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/in-a-lonely-corner-of-coney-island-a-fight-over-care-for-the-vulnerable">several weeks at a home called Oceanview Manor</a> in Coney Island, where residents wander around outside the facility drinking malt liquor, begging for change and eating from garbage cans, looking ill and unkempt. Workers seemed outmatched, and the home’s owners declined to be interviewed.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>We are looking to continue our reporting on this subject.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><em>Listen to this podcast on <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=352685624">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/propublica">SoundCloud</a> or <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/20308">Stitcher</a>.</em></p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6726889.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject/>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-08T12:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Joaquin Sapien</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>Help Us Monitor Political Ads Online</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6726890</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Sep 2017 14:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/help-us-monitor-political-ads-online#134385</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/julia-angwin">Julia Angwin</a> and <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/jeff-larson">Jeff Larson</a> </p>
|
||
<p>During the 2016 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump’s operatives bragged to the press that they tried to dissuade African Americans from voting by <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go">targeting them with Facebook posts</a> titled “Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>If similar ads had appeared on TV, radio or in newspapers, journalists and advocacy groups would have fact-checked them. Negative ads in those media are closely monitored because historically they have influenced elections — most notably in 1988, when a television ad accused presidential candidate Michael Dukakis of “weak-on-crime” policies that enabled a furloughed prisoner named Willie Horton to commit rape.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The Trump ads may have been effective as well. But since they supposedly appeared on Facebook, nobody can say for sure if they ran, what they said or whom they targeted. Even though it’s the world’s largest social network, what happens on Facebook stays on Facebook.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The nature of online advertising is such that ads appear on people’s screens for just a few hours, and are limited to the audience that the advertiser has chosen. So, for example, if an advertiser micro-targets a group such as 40-year-old female motorcyclists in Nashville, Tennessee, (Facebook audience estimate: 1,300 people) with a misleading ad, it’s unlikely anyone other than the bikers will ever see those ads. Yesterday, 10 months after Trump was elected, Facebook officials acknowledged discovering that a Russian “troll farm” paid $100,000 during the campaign to place political ads on issues such as gun rights and immigration, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/facebook-says-it-sold-political-ads-to-russian-company-during-2016-election/2017/09/06/32f01fd2-931e-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html">reported</a>. </p>
|
||
|
||
<p>With online ads, “you can go as narrow as you want, as false as you want and there is no accountability,” said Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, a public interest media and technology advocacy group.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>ProPublica wants to change that. Today we are launching a crowdsourcing tool that will gather political ads from Facebook, the biggest online platform for political discourse. We’re calling it the Political Ad Collector — or PAC, in a nod to the Political Action Committees that fund many of today’s political ads.</p>
|
||
<aside class="text small right">
|
||
<h3>Download the Extension</h3>
|
||
|
||
<p>You can download the Facebook Political Ad Collector from the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-political-ad-col/enliecaalhkhhihcmnbjfmmjkljlcinl">Chrome Web Store</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<p>We will begin using the PAC this month to track ads during the run-up to the German parliamentary election, which will be held on Sept. 24. The election has drawn international attention as a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policies, and a test of the strength of an anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>We plan to monitor other elections, including the midterm elections in the U.S. In the U.S., information about politicians’ use of online ads is especially sparse because of loopholes in the campaign finance laws that allow candidates to report fewer details about their online advertising than about other types of advertising.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>We are working with three news outlets in Germany — <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/">Spiegel Online</a>, <a href="http://www.sueddeutsche.de/">Süddeutsche Zeitung</a> and <a href="http://www.tagesschau.de/">Tagesschau</a>. They will ask their readers to install our tool, and will use it themselves to monitor ads during the election.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The tool is a small piece of software that users can add to their web browser (<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-political-ad-col/enliecaalhkhhihcmnbjfmmjkljlcinl">Chrome</a>). When users log into Facebook, the tool will collect the ads displayed on the user’s news feed and guess which ones are political based on an algorithm built by ProPublica.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>One benefit for interested users is that the tool will show them Facebook political ads that weren’t aimed at their demographic group, and that they wouldn’t ordinarily see.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The tool does not collect any personally identifiable information, and we will not know which ads are shown to which user. The political ads that we collect will be contributed to a public database that will allow the public to see them all.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Facebook gives users more information about why a particular ad is targeted to them than other online platforms provide to their customers. Our tool will also collect that targeting information provided by Facebook, which may help illuminate what viewership the ads are trying to reach.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>After the U.S. presidential election, Facebook launched its own transparency efforts. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has rolled out a <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/category/news-feed-fyi/">series of initiatives</a> to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061">tackle fake news</a> on its site. And although it doesn’t fact-check ads, Facebook does require <a href="https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/">advertisers to comply with the law</a>, which includes prohibitions against deceptive advertising. This week Facebook said it <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/09/information-operations-update/amp/">had shut down the “inauthentic accounts”</a> affiliated with Russia that had placed ads during the 2016 election cycle and is taking steps to prevent similar accounts from popping up in the future.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Still, more can be done to hold politicians, PACs and others accountable for the messages they spread online. We hope that by monitoring political advertising on Facebook, we can increase the transparency and accountability of elections around the world.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Please join us!</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6726890.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Machine Bias</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-07T14:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>What Does an Innocent Man Have to Do to Go Free? Plead Guilty.</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6726891</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/what-does-an-innocent-man-have-to-do-alford-plea-guilty#134395</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/megan-rose">Megan Rose</a> </p>
|
||
<p>On Oct. 15, 2008, James Owens shuffled, head high despite his shackles, into a Baltimore courtroom, eager for his new trial to begin. Two decades into a life sentence, he would finally have his chance to prove what he’d been saying all along: The state had the wrong man.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Owens had been convicted of murdering a 24-year-old college student, who was found raped and stabbed in her home. Then he’d been shunted off to state prison until DNA testing — the scientific marvel that he’d watched for years free other men — finally caught up with his case in 2006. The semen that had been found inside the victim wasn’t his. A Maryland court tossed his conviction and granted Owens a rare do-over trial.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>State prosecutors balked, insisting they still had enough evidence to keep Owens locked away and vowed to retry him. But they had also offered him an unusual deal. He could guarantee his immediate release from prison with no retrial and no danger of a new conviction — if he’d agree to plead guilty. The deal, known as an Alford plea, came with what seemed like an additional carrot: Despite pleading guilty, the Alford plea would allow Owens to say on the record that he was innocent. The Alford plea was an enticing chance for Owens, by then 43, to move on as a free man. But he’d give up a chance at exoneration. To the world, and legally, he’d still be a killer.</p>
|
||
<p>Owens refused the deal. He told his lawyer he wanted to clear his name, and he was willing to take his chances in court and wait in prison however long it took for a new trial to begin. It was a startling choice for an incarcerated defendant — even those with persuasive stories of innocence typically don’t trust the system enough to roll the dice again with 12 jurors or an appellate court. Most defendants, lawyers say, instinctively and rationally, grab any deal they can to win their freedom back.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The decision cost Owens 16 more months behind bars. Then, on that fall day in 2008, when the trial was set to begin, the prosecutor stood and, without a glance at Owens, told the judge, “The state declines to prosecute.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In a legal gamble in which the prosecution typically holds the winning cards, Owens had called the state’s bluff. He walked out that day exonerated — and with the right to sue the state for the 21 years he spent wrongly imprisoned.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>It seemed the ultimate victory in a city like Baltimore, with its deeply rooted and often justified mistrust of police and prosecutors. But Owens wasn’t the only man convicted of murdering that 24-year-old college student. Another white Baltimore man, James Thompson, had also been put away for life. Tests showed that his DNA didn’t match the semen either, but the state’s attorney’s office refused to drop the charges. Instead, as it had with Owens, it offered Thompson an Alford plea. Thompson grabbed the deal and walked out of prison a convicted murderer.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Same crime. Same evidence. Very different endings.</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
|
||
<p>Ever since DNA ushered in a new era in criminal justice, even the toughest law-and-order advocates have come to acknowledge a hard truth: Sometimes innocent people are locked away for crimes they didn’t commit. Less widely understood is just how reluctant the system is to righting those wrongs.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Courts only assess guilt or innocence before a conviction. After that, appellate courts focus solely on fairness. Did everyone follow the rules and live up to their duties? Getting a re-hearing of the facts is a monumental, often decades-long quest through a legal thicket. Most defendants never get to start the process, let alone win. Even newly discovered evidence is not enough in many cases to prompt a review. And, for the tiny percentage of defendants who get one, the prosecutors still have the advantage: They have final discretion about whether to press charges and how severe they’ll be. Powerful influence over the pace of a case, the sentence and bail. And, compared with an incarcerated defendant, vast resources.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>No one tracks how often the wrongly convicted are pressured to accept plea deals in lieu of exonerations. But in Baltimore City and County alone — two separate jurisdictions with their own state’s attorneys — ProPublica identified at least 10 cases in the last 19 years in which defendants with viable innocence claims ended up signing Alford pleas or time-served deals. In each case, exculpatory evidence was uncovered, persuasive enough to garner new trials, evidentiary hearings or writs of actual innocence. Prosecutors defend the original convictions, arguing, then and now, that the deals were made for valid reasons — such as the death of a key witness or a victim’s unwillingness to weather a retrial. The current state’s attorney in Baltimore County, Scott Schellenberger, said that “prosecutors take their oath to get it right very seriously” and wouldn’t stand in the way of exoneration if the facts called for it.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The menace of such deals, though, is clear: At worst, innocent people are stigmatized and unable to sue the state for false imprisonment, prosecutors keep unearned wins on their case records and those of the department, and no one re-investigates the crime — the real suspect is never brought to justice.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The plea deals ProPublica examined in Baltimore City involved two prior state’s attorneys. A spokeswoman for Marilyn Mosby, the current chief, didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment or for interviews with prosecutors in those cases.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The pleas in two of these Baltimore cases were later overturned after misconduct was uncovered in the original convictions, and the men won full exonerations. One, Walter Lomax, a black man convicted by an all-white jury shortly after the 1968 race riots in the city, served 38 years of a life sentence before taking a time-served deal in 2006. The state didn’t concede he was innocent until 2014.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Wrongful convictions are bad enough, Lomax said, but they’re even more “horrible when it becomes obvious the person is innocent and the state won’t at the very least acknowledge that.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Some legal and cognitive science experts suggest that once detectives and prosecutors commit to a suspect and a theory of the crime, it changes how they evaluate evidence, and then the system itself exacerbates that focus at every step. Prosecutors are rewarded for proving and defending their theories, leaving little incentive to acknowledge weaknesses in cases, particularly in high-stakes crimes such as rape and murder. This mind-set is bolstered by one of the great positives of the system, one which legal experts, even those dedicated to exposing wrongful convictions, acknowledge: Prosecutors generally get it right.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Psychologists have a myriad of terms for the powerful, largely subconscious biases at play, but most people would call the collective phenomenon “tunnel vision.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Wrongful convictions involving violent crimes typically involve poor, often minority defendants, sometimes with limited education or IQs, who are convicted on scant evidence or flawed forensics. The cases are fueled by an early theory of the crime that relentlessly drives the investigation and prosecution — even, in some cases, to official misconduct.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“At some point psychologically, you go from figuring out what happened to figuring out how to prove it happened the way you said it did,” Barbara O’Brien, a law professor involved with the National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan, said. “It’s very difficult to take a step back from that.”</p>
|
||
<p>Marty Stroud, a former Louisiana prosecutor, made national headlines in 2015 when he penned a rare public apology for putting an innocent man on death row for 31 years. He told me recently that the system comes down hardest on those without the means to defend themselves. “It’s easy to prosecute those people and put them away and not think twice about it because no one is speaking for them,” he said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The certitude of detectives and prosecutors hardens when their theory is validated by a judge or jury, and later, by an appellate court. Time, instead of allowing for fresh eyes, often makes biases worse. When a defendant like Owens gets a new hearing, the district or state’s attorney’s office — long committed to his guilt — has to re-justify that decision.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>If they admit they got it wrong, prosecutors have to accept that a person was robbed of years of his life, the real perpetrator was never found, the victim’s family was let down, and, to top it off, they now have a cold case that’s unlikely to be solved. With the Alford plea, not only is the real perpetrator not caught but the case is officially closed on the books. It also dings their won-loss record on typically high-profile cases. The idea of a wrongful conviction, Stroud said, assaults a prosecutor’s sense of identity that “we’re the good guys. We have the white hats and are putting the bad guys in jail.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Exonerations are also like a Pandora’s box in two important and unsettling ways. First, looking closely at why wrongful convictions happen — even in cases when everyone worked in good faith — could force a reckoning about deeply held beliefs on what is required to solve and punish crimes. False confessions, for example, often are a result of time-honored, and perfectly legal, tactics to soften up a suspect, such as lying or conducting questioning in the dead of night, said Steven Drizin, the former director of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions. When wrongful convictions are a result of misconduct, there could be a string of other bad convictions connected to that prosecutor or detective.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>It’s no coincidence, many defense lawyers across the country say, that when misconduct comes up, prosecutors are quicker to propose an Alford plea or similar deal, effectively quashing any further inquiry into the behavior. One ACLU attorney told me about a galling Alabama case in which prosecutors insisted they would re-seek the death penalty, and it was “only because we were continuing to expose prosecutorial misconduct that they finally agreed to settle the case.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="image medium right">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-knife-inline.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-knife-inline.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-knife-inline.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-knife-inline.jpg 1600w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>After James Thompson brought police a knife that he claimed to have picked up near a murder victim’s home, a Baltimore police officer posed with the weapon. A local TV news station filmed police taking the photo and erroneously reported that the police had found it. “There’s a real danger in staging things like this,” said Stephen Mercer, a Maryland public defender.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Baltimore Police Department file, courtesy of Stephen Mercer)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>On a muggy August evening in 1987, police officers swarmed a block of squat brick rowhouses in a mostly white, working-class neighborhood in southeast Baltimore. A young woman had been raped, strangled with a sock and stabbed to death in her second-floor bedroom. Detective Thomas Pellegrini, who’d been assigned to homicide only the year before and, who, by his own admission, was green enough not to sweat the details, caught the case as lead detective. He was assisted by Detective Gary Dunnigan and the squad’s boss, Sgt. Jay Landsman. The trio would become famous a few years later when David Simon heralded them in his book “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets” and on the subsequent prime-time TV show it inspired.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The next morning, the neighborhood reverberated with the choppy drone of police helicopters circling overhead. Thompson, a gas station attendant who’d suffered a brain injury in childhood, lived down the street with his wife and their two young boys. He’d heard detectives were looking for a knife and offering a $1,000 reward. It seemed a prime opportunity for a quick buck. The short, stocky 27-year-old wandered over to the yellow police tape and handed Pellegrini a large switchblade. Thompson said he’d found the bloody weapon in the grass the night before, pocketed it, and cleaned it at home — somehow unaware of the massive overnight police presence. At Pellegrini’s urging, he fetched a pair of cut-off jeans he said he’d been wearing at the time, which had a small bloodstain on the back right pocket.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Forensics showed a possible presence of blood or other unknown substance on a small area of the knife and no evidence to suggest it was used in a violent struggle, such as a broken tip from hitting bone. The detectives moved forward on the assumption it was the murder weapon.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Two days later, rather than being thanked and handed the reward money, Thompson found himself under suspicion. In a panic, he fingered Owens. The two had been casual friends, but they’d had a falling out over accusations of theft when they’d briefly worked together at the gas station. In a thoughtless burst of vengeance, Thompson gave an official statement at the police station; he said the knife was actually his but claimed Owens had stolen it and then told him where to find it the day after the murder. Thompson noticed the detectives ate up everything and realized they had nothing else to go on. At the time, there seemed to be no risk in just making it up as he went along. After he retrieved the knife, Thompson told detectives, Owens washed it in the kitchen sink. Thompson didn’t give the police any details about the murder, but he said Owens had told him he’d had sex with the victim.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Owens, 22 at the time, was arrested and charged with burglary, rape and first-degree murder. In just 72 hours, the detectives had closed the case. There was no forensic evidence, motive or eyewitnesses linking Owens to the crime. Landsman and Pellegrini would later say they had believed at the time that without Thompson, Owens would walk. Even the prosecutor, Marvin “Sam” Brave, said he viewed Thompson’s story as “implausible” and didn’t think he had the truth, but he nevertheless pressed charges.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Brave recently told me that “if you think you’ve got the right guy, but not that you can necessarily prove it beyond reasonable doubt, it doesn’t mean you don’t go forward.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="image medium right">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-james-owens-past-inline.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-james-owens-past-inline.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-james-owens-past-inline.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-james-owens-past-inline.jpg 1600w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>A Baltimore Police Department photo of James Owens from August 5, 1987, the day Owens, 22, was arrested for murder.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Baltimore Police Department file, courtesy of Stephen Mercer)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>When Owens’ trial began in February 1988, Thompson was the star witness. He’d considered coming clean several times but was afraid he’d be sent to jail. He’d lied to the cops during a previous encounter and had been arrested for making a false police report. Despite that history, the detectives in this case had made him feel like a hero. Pellegrini didn’t think Thompson was “the sharpest pencil in the box,” but at that point in his career, he said in a recent deposition, he thought only suspects would lie to him. Brave also was unconcerned. “If the part that you think he is telling the truth [about] contributes to your case, you use it,” he said. “He doesn’t have to be telling the truth about everything.” The rest of the case relied mainly on minor scratches Owens, a factory worker, had on his arm and a spot of possible blood that had been swabbed from his hand. Two jailhouse snitches who’d been Owens’ cellmates while he awaited trial claimed he had separately confessed to them, though the story Owens purportedly told them contradicted the version Thompson had given police.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In his opening statement, Brave told the jury that any notion that police had “bungled the investigation” and the defendant was innocent was from the fantastical realm of television. But Brave was concerned enough about Thompson’s story that he took him aside the morning of his testimony and warned he was going to “look silly” and it was time he “told us the truth about how that knife really got back into his possession,” according to testimony Brave later gave about the conversation. He even assured Thompson he wouldn’t be prosecuted for making a false statement.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>When Thompson took the stand, he told the jury he’d had a “heart to heart” with the prosecutor and was “ready to tell the truth.” In this new version of events — which Brave described later as “sellable” to a jury — Thompson said that around 8 a.m. the morning after the murder, Owens had come by his house and given him the bloody knife. Except this story, too, was a lie. As one of the detectives noted to Brave afterward, Owens’ boss had told police he’d been at work by that point in the morning. “The more I tried to fix things to go in my favor, the bigger hole I dug for myself,” Thompson told me recently.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>That Friday Brave went home “really worried about the case,” and stewed over the weekend that he was on “a sinking ship.” Late Sunday evening, he met with Pellegrini and told him to take blood and hair samples from Thompson for testing to exclude him as a suspect and bolster his credibility as a witness. Brave already knew the pubic hairs found on the victim didn’t match Owens. Neither did saliva on a cigarette found at the scene.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>During a lunch break at trial the next day, Brave and the three detectives met with the city’s forensics expert who, they said, told them the hair was a match to Thompson. Detectives brought Thompson in, read him his rights, and told him “he was in a lot of trouble” and might be charged. His hair, Landsman told him, had been found in the victim’s house. Thompson later contended he knew this couldn’t possibly be true — he hadn’t been there at all. But at the time, he said, he was scared and thought if he just said what pleased the detectives and got Owens convicted, he’d be alright.</p>
|
||
<figure class="image large left">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-match-hair-inline.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-match-hair-inline.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-match-hair-inline.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-match-hair-inline.jpg 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170907-match-hair-inline.jpg 2000w" />
|
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|
||
<figcaption>In 1988, Baltimore's forensic examiner wrote on the back of a picture of Thompson's hair that his hair matched one found at the crime scene. In 2010, the same examiner said pictures of the hair showed that they didn't match, moreover that type of hair analysis was no longer considered valid.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Baltimore Police Department file, courtesy of Stephen Mercer)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>Like an actor doing take after take to accommodate the wishes of a director, Thompson went through several more versions about what supposedly happened, adjusting his story to reflect additional pieces of evidence the detectives told him about. Thompson first said he broke into the house but didn’t go upstairs. After the detectives told him his hair had been found on the second floor, Thompson then said he did go upstairs but hid in the bathroom while Owens attacked the victim after she unexpectedly came home. Detectives then told him his pubic hair had been found on the victim’s buttocks, suggesting his pants must have been down. After several hours of this back and forth, Landsman went to the courtroom and handed Brave a note, saying Thompson had admitted to burglarizing the house with Owens.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Thompson was taken directly from the interrogation room to the witness stand to testify a second time. Now, speaking so softly at first that the judge twice had to tell him to raise his voice, Thompson said he and Owens had broken into the apartment to steal jewelry, and Owens attacked the victim when she came home unexpectedly. Then, while Owens raped her, Thompson testified that he masturbated over her back — his newly concocted explanation for how the pubic hair the state claimed was his had ended up on the victim. Owens, Thompson said, then stabbed her and threw the knife on the ground, which Thompson picked up on the way out.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>This was, unbeknownst to Owens or his lawyer, Thompson’s eighth version of events — the one that satisfied the officers that they had enough “to get James Owens,” as one detective later put it.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Even on the stand implicating himself in the crime, with both Brave and Owens’ lawyer stressing charges he might face, Thompson said the full ramifications of his lies didn’t dawn on him. He thought he’d be fine once the trial was over.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“I never hurt anyone. I never touched that young lady,” Thompson said again and again on the stand, adding at one point that he’d take a polygraph to “prove my innocence on that particular behalf.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Owens was convicted of the burglary and the murder but found not guilty of the rape. Thompson’s changing stories had cast enough doubt that Brave acknowledged in his closing argument that either man could have committed the rape. Thompson, who had been arrested right after testifying and immediately recanted his confession, was later convicted of burglary, rape and murder. Thompson’s multiple different stories of the crime had been accepted as truth, but his multiple attempts to protest his innocence were taken as lies.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Both men were sentenced to life without parole. Owens was the first in Maryland to receive such a punishment.</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="image x-large left">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-owens-interlude-inline.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-owens-interlude-inline.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-owens-interlude-inline.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-owens-interlude-inline.jpg 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170907-owens-interlude-inline.jpg 2000w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
<span class="credit">Lexey Swall, special to ProPublica</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>Owens never resigned himself to his fate. A few years into his sentence, he read about DNA in a magazine and implored everyone he could think of to test the evidence in his case. He eagerly conferred over coffee with Kirk Bloodsworth, the inmate across the hall, then cheered Bloodsworth’s exoneration by DNA in 1993, the first of its kind in the nation involving a death sentence. Shaking Bloodsworth’s hand when he left prison, Owens thought, “Man, one day I’ll be out there.” Then the O.J. Simpson trial introduced him to Barry Scheck, the founder of the Innocence Project, and Owens sent his office a letter. Shunned by his family and cut off from the way most convicts got cash, he traded chicken sandwiches from his kitchen job for stamps to mail it. Still, no one took up the cause. The semen found in the victim and the blood on Thompson’s shorts sat undisturbed in the Baltimore medical examiner’s office for 19 years.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Finally, after a special division within the Maryland public defender’s office became interested, he got a new lawyer and a hearing. A judge ordered DNA testing in 2006 — over the objections of prosecutors — and the results dismantled the state’s theory of the crime. At both trials, the state had argued that the break-in, the rape and the murder were inextricably linked. At Owens’s trial, the prosecutor told the jury Owens had leered at the victim as she sunbathed and “decided that he wanted her.” He broke into her house, laid in wait for her to return, raped her, strangled her and “for good measure … mutilate[d] her with multiple stab wounds.” The prosecution doubled down on this narrative at Thompson’s trial, telling the jury he and Owens “had to humiliate [the victim] by taking turns raping her.” And the blood on the back pocket of Thompson’s shorts, the prosecutor said, was definitively the victim’s.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>DNA proved most of those arguments false. The semen found in the victim didn’t come from Owens or Thompson, and the blood on the shorts wasn’t even from a woman. It was Thompson’s own. When Owens heard the news at Jessup Correctional Institution, just southwest of Baltimore, he sat on the floor of his cell and cried.</p>
|
||
<p>The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office was unmoved. Prosecutors fought both Thompson and Owens as the two separately sought to have their convictions overturned.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Owens’ case moved faster through the courts. His new attorney was Stephen Mercer, a Maryland defense attorney with an earnestness that had survived more than 20 years in the trenches. Mercer knew the state, with its evidence decimated, was going to push for a deal. He fumed that prosecutors were using psychological warfare to do it — opposing bail and slowing the case, so Owens would spend more time on the inside thinking about being on the outside. Owens’ evidentiary hearing was moved from January to March to May. Only then, nine months after the DNA showed Owens wasn’t the rapist, did the state agree to a new trial while insisting that Owens was still guilty of murder.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The state’s attorney’s office, run at the time by Patricia Jessamy, argued that the rape was immaterial to the murder, and, a spokeswoman said, the DNA evidence was “trivial.” Mark Cohen, the new prosecutor, told Mercer that other evidence in the case, including Thompson’s confession and the testimony of jailhouse informants, was still persuasive. (Jessamy didn’t respond to several phone messages requesting comment and Cohen has since died.)</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Mercer said the prosecutor’s stance was “very cynical. It really seemed that the desire to keep the conviction was for reasons that had nothing to do with the evidence.” The state’s guiding star, Mercer knew, was a rigid belief that what was long ago decided by a jury, and upheld by an appellate court, shouldn’t be continually second-guessed.</p>
|
||
<figure class="image large left">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-mercer-inline.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-mercer-inline.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-mercer-inline.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-mercer-inline.jpg 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170907-mercer-inline.jpg 2000w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>Stephen Mercer, chief of the forensics division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, dug up exculpatory evidence for three defendants — James Owens, James Thompson and Wendell Griffin — who had been sentenced to life and secured their release from prison.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Lexey Swall, special to ProPublica)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>In Owens’ case, it wasn’t just the semen and the blood that didn’t hold up 20 years later. The type of hair analysis done on the pubic hair had subsequently been dismissed as junk science. The hair, along with the knife, had been destroyed. But the state’s own expert, who’d inspected the hair at the time of the original trials, said at a hearing that the scientific community no longer does a visual hair comparison to “draw the conclusions we drew back in 1988 with a microscope.” Now analysts use DNA analysis.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Not long after Owens was granted a new trial in May 2007, Cohen proposed a deal. It wasn’t surprising. The plea bargain is the lifeblood of the overburdened criminal-justice system. About 95 percent of cases never go before a jury. Instead, most defendants agree to plead guilty in exchange for lesser sentences. In cases like Owens’, in which new evidence undermines old, legal advocates question whether incarcerated defendants should even be offered a plea. In every case, prosecutors “need to really inspect their own motivations,” Thiru Vignarajah, a former federal and Baltimore City prosecutor who later served as deputy attorney general of Maryland, said. “Are they offering a plea or time served because that’s in the best interest of the case, or are they allowing some institutional interest of preserving the conviction to trump a prosecutor’s duty to seek justice?”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>A year before Owens’ retrial, Jessamy’s office had convinced another defendant to take an Alford plea. Locked up for 20 years, that defendant had at first refused a deal after he, too, was granted a new trial because of DNA evidence. As the trial was set to begin, the prosecution requested a postponement. When the state again delayed the subsequent trial date, the defendant broke down. He accepted the plea.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Afterward, Jessamy’s spokeswoman scoffed at the defendant in a news story, saying it was “inconceivable” that after 20 years the defendant couldn’t wait a little longer, and “if he truly believes he is innocent, he should have gone to trial to see that justice is served.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>As Owens’ trial got closer, Cohen kept sweetening the deal, knocking down the charge and requiring less probation. Finally, they offered Owens an Alford plea for second-degree murder, time served and no probation. Mercer lost sleep over whether Owens should take it. A trial was risky and a chance at guaranteed freedom was rare for any defendant. Owens repeatedly asked himself: “Why are they doing this to me? Why should I have to plead guilty to something I didn’t do?” Now mostly bald and with a moustache, he’d grown up in the foster care system. He’d been viciously attacked while in prison. He didn’t have much to hold onto except his resolute insistence from day one that he was innocent. He wasn’t about to “admit there was sufficient evidence to convict him while playing this wink-and-nod game that he was claiming his innocence,” Mercer said. So the Alford plea, like all the others Mercer had passed to Owens through the Plexiglass, was flatly rejected: “Mr. Mercer, there is no way. I am going to trial.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Cohen, suspicious that the deal hadn’t been properly relayed, had Owens and Mercer join him for a bench conference, so that the Alford plea could be offered in front of the judge. <strong>“</strong>I’m not taking nothing, dude,” Owens recalled saying. “I will die in the penitentiary if I have to.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In October 2008, Owens was vindicated. Cohen was forced to tell the court he didn’t have the goods for a retrial. Owens stepped out of prison free for the first time in 21 years, telling gathered reporters, “You can’t give me that time back.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="image medium right">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-thompson-inline-one.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-thompson-inline-one.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-thompson-inline-one.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-thompson-inline-one.jpg 1600w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>James Thompson, 57, has been out of prison for less than six months and is trying to get his life back on track. After DNA cleared him of the rape, he took an Alford plea to be released from prison. “Did I want to take that? Absolutely not. But I wanted to go home.”
|
||
<span class="credit">(Lexey Swall, special to ProPublica)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>Thompson, meanwhile, was fighting the same battles while incarcerated about 75 miles away at Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, Maryland. But in his case, prosecutors were employing a perplexing logic. They’d agreed that the DNA evidence from the semen warranted a new trial for Owens, who had not been convicted of rape, but they refused a new trial for Thompson, who had been.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Thompson, by now gray-haired and hard of hearing, was dismayed. He’d saved the newspaper clipping about the DNA findings, and when he read that Owens had gone free, he was certain he’d be next. He couldn’t understand why the DNA could clear Owens of all charges while it did nothing for him, even though the DNA excluded him as well. But Mercer, who’d picked up Thompson’s case after freeing Owens, did. Thompson had confessed, and that was prosecutorial gold. In Simon’s book about the Baltimore detectives who’d secured Thompson’s confession, he detailed the interrogation tactics they had commonly employed. To get confessions, he wrote, the detective became a “huckster … thieving and silver-tongued,” and without the “chance for a detective to manipulate a suspect’s mind, a lot of bad people would simply go free.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Poorly understood at the time is that such manipulation can also compel innocent people to agree to whatever the police want. As the U.S. Supreme Court noted in 2009, “a frighteningly high percentage of people … confess to crimes they never committed.” According to the Innocence Project, 28 percent of defendants later exonerated by DNA had falsely confessed.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>During the initial trials in 1988, prosecutors had argued that the pubic hair and the blood on the jeans proved Thompson was telling the truth, but in 2009 the Maryland Court of Appeals wrote that the DNA finding “usurps the State’s arguments all together.” In essence this meant none of Thompson’s statements to police or prosecutors throughout the case were corroborated by evidence.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Despite the statistics, convincing a jury that someone would falsely confess to a crime — particularly to something as heinous as a murder or a rape — is incredibly hard. Juries want to believe that people are rational actors, like themselves, with an almost primal instinct toward self-protection. It wouldn’t matter that the state no longer had the evidence to prove it, Mercer knew, a jury would most likely myopically focus on the confession.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Thompson told me he’d been happy for Owens when he was released — he’d always wished he could apologize to him for what he did — but that feeling had faded into self-pity as the calendar went from 2008 to 2009 to 2010 and his case stalled in the courts. Now he was mostly anxious. He just wanted relief, whatever it might be, so when Sharon Holback, the new prosecutor on the case, eventually offered him an Alford plea — 23 years after he’d first fatefully approached police — his excitement overwhelmed his sense of injustice.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Mercer worked to make it the best deal he could. If Thompson took the plea, it meant the state would let him go, but the deal had some risky strings attached. Any charge that carried a life sentence had to come off the table, because in Maryland, a probation violation — even something as relatively minor as a DUI — sends the defendant back to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence. The two sides agreed to second-degree murder, which carries a maximum of 30 years. That way if Thompson violated probation, he’d only have seven and a half years over his head, since he had served more than 22.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Gregg Bernstein, Baltimore City state’s attorney from 2011 to 2015, oversaw at least two similar deals. He couldn’t remember the details but said he’d thought a lot about whether it was okay for an innocent man to take an Alford plea. In the end, he said, most cases lack black-and-white certainty, regardless of evidence suggesting innocence. “It’s not that simple to say yay or nay,” he said. “Pleas are a way to resolve them.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Former prosecutor Vignarajah, though, told me he wonders if that kind of resolution only looks like a win for everyone on paper. “In reality everyone lost,” he said. “The victim sees no justice. The defendant is walking away with a conviction. And the prosecution didn’t get anyone to take responsibility [for the crime].”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>On July 29, 2010, when Thompson left prison under the Alford plea, Holback got the last word: Thompson “is in no way exonerated.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
|
||
<p>Since their releases, Thompson and Owens have led dramatically different lives.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Thompson thought he could go back to the person he was almost 23 years earlier, before the murder rap, but society didn’t look at him that way. When he applied for a job, he put a question mark where the form asked if he’d been convicted of a felony.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“I tried to explain I was wrongfully convicted, but people don’t want to hear that,” Thompson said. “There’s no reasoning with somebody. ‘Innocent people do not go to prison’ is just the motto.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Thompson held onto his freedom for only a little over a year. In October 2011 he was arrested after his ex-girlfriend claimed that he had molested her young daughter. Thompson, who’d recently kicked the girlfriend out of his apartment, denied the charge, saying he’d spanked the girl’s bare butt to discipline her. The state reduced the charges to a misdemeanor for touching the girl’s buttocks and gave him time served for the five months he’d been in jail.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>It didn’t end there, though. Because the misdemeanor violated his probation attached to his Alford plea, Thompson went from a local jail to a state prison to serve the remaining seven and a half years.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Mercer said he believes the Alford plea made it very difficult for Thompson to defend himself. “It was a question of credibility,” Mercer said. “Who’s going to believe him? He was stuck having to do damage control.”</p>
|
||
<figure class="image large left">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-thompson-inline-two.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-thompson-inline-two.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-thompson-inline-two.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-thompson-inline-two.jpg 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170907-thompson-inline-two.jpg 2000w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>Thompson set into motion the prosecution of Owens, and eventually himself, when he lied about finding the murder weapon to get a $1,000 police reward. He then falsely testified that he saw Owens commit the rape and murder. “I’m really ashamed,” he said. “Why I did what I did, I can’t explain it.”
|
||
<span class="credit">(Lexey Swall, special to ProPublica)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>Owens has fared better. He has been embraced by what little family he had. He has moved into a cousin’s house and has begun working with him cleaning gutters and doing landscaping. And he has grown close to his nieces and nephews, a bittersweet feeling for someone who’d had no chance to build a family of his own. Owens told me he has tried not to let the anger sink him, but he struggles. His exoneration came without compensation or even an apology. “What’s striking in these cases is a total lack of accountability,” said Michele Nethercott, of the Innocence Project in Baltimore. “Nothing ever really happens” to the police and prosecutors whose actions led to wrongful convictions.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Owens wonders today if his prosecution became all about keeping the win. “Instead of focusing on me and getting me to take a deal for something I didn’t do, they need to focus on the victim. Her murder has never been solved,” he said. “I think they should go back and look and do something for this girl.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In 2011, Owens found a lawyer, Charles Curlett, to sue Baltimore. Curlett determined that there were several issues of misconduct involved in Owens’ conviction. First, his lawyer had been told nothing of the changing stories Thompson gave the detectives. The information could have been used to undermine Thompson’s credibility and failing to share it was likely a violation of Owens’ due-process rights. Such failures are known as Brady violations, after a 1963 Supreme Court case in which the justices determined that withholding favorable information from the defense is unconstitutional. Also, one of the jailhouse snitches who testified that Owens had confessed had been a police informant for years and said he recruited the other snitch. This, too, wasn’t revealed to the defense, nor were the informant’s letters asking for favors in exchange for his testimony.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Brady violations had become so prevalent in Baltimore’s courts that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently admonished the city’s prosecutors to remember their legal obligations: “Only this practice ensures the fair trial that our justice system aspires to provide” and makes it so “no one has to worry after the fact whether the jury convicted the wrong person.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The city furiously fought Owens. Dodging such suits, many defense lawyers contend, is part of what drives these plea offers. “If not expressly that, it’s implicit in a lot of decisions made in this setting,” said Michael Imbroscio, an attorney who had a client in Baltimore City take a time-served deal. The city won dismissal of Owens’ suit against the state’s attorney’s office and Brave, who the court ruled had immunity, and the Baltimore Police Department. But the case is going to trial in federal court, likely early next year, against detectives Pellegrini, Landsman and Dunnigan as individuals. There’s millions in compensation at stake for Owens and a public airing of misdeeds for the city.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Civil litigation is “so important,” Mercer said. “Often, that’s the only time there’s scrutiny into what wrongs were done.”</p>
|
||
<figure class="image x-large left">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-owens-inline.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-owens-inline.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-owens-inline.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-owens-inline.jpg 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170907-owens-inline.jpg 2000w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>Owens will go to court early next year in his lawsuit against the detectives who investigated him. He alleges the detectives violated his constitutional right to a fair trial by withholding key material from his lawyer.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Lexey Swall, special to ProPublica)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>The type of misconduct alleged in Owens’ case is echoed in nine more of the 14 exonerations out of Baltimore City and County since 2002, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. The 2014 exoneration of Sabein Burgess, for example, came after it emerged that Baltimore detectives never revealed a key detail to the defense: that a young witness had told them he saw the murder suspect and it wasn’t Burgess. The detectives even submitted a report falsely stating that the witness had been asleep during the crime. Like Owens, Burgess is suing, claiming that detectives “cut corners and rushed to judgment.” His trial is set for this fall and names a different group of detectives.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Misconduct can also be found in the cases of some of the remaining exonerated defendants who, like Thompson, aren’t officially considered exonerated at all but who were released under Alford pleas or time-served deals after questions were raised about their initial convictions. Curlett is representing one such man, Wendell Griffin, who was convicted of murder in Baltimore in 1982. Decades later, it came to light that three detectives — two also featured in Simon’s book and a third who is Landsman’s brother — had buried photo lineups and witness statements pointing to Griffin’s innocence. He was let out on a time-served deal in 2012.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The detectives named in the Owens and Burgess lawsuits have denied allegations of misconduct. Michael Marshall, who represents the detectives in Owens’ and Griffin’s suits, declined to comment, referring questions to the chief of legal affairs for the Baltimore City Police Department, who didn’t return several calls.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Thompson, whose parents died while he was in prison, has been abandoned by the rest of his family. He was released early for good behavior in February after serving a little more than five of his remaining seven and a half years, and as much as he blames himself for his mistakes, he now thinks his plea was a “bum deal.” He wishes there was a way to prove to his loved ones that “although I served 30 years … I didn’t commit the crime.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>The strain of the Alford plea proved too much for one of Baltimore’s wrongly convicted. Chris Conover left prison under the plea in 2003 after DNA called into question his murder conviction in Baltimore County. On the outside, he suffered from severe panic attacks and depression, but his wife told the local newspaper that he couldn’t face in-patient treatment, which meant being back behind locked doors. His petition for a pardon from Maryland’s governor was turned down in 2012. Three years later, Conover killed himself.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“Having been convicted really defines who you are — it becomes itself a prison,” Mercer said. “Once out, with a conviction still on your shoulders, having maintained your innocence in a Alford plea is of little comfort and of very little practical benefit.”</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6726891.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Criminal Justice</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-07T12:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Megan Rose</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>The Freedom Plea: How Prosecutors Deny Exonerations by Dangling the Prison Keys</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6726892</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/freedom-plea-prosecutors-deny-exonerations-dangling-prison-keys#134410</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/megan-rose">Megan Rose</a> </p>
|
||
<p>Despite new evidence undermining the convictions of at least eight men for violent crimes in both Baltimore City and County over the last two decades, none were exonerated. Instead, they left prison only after agreeing to plea deals with state prosecutors. In each case, the men took either Alford pleas, in which defendants can maintain their innocence for the record, or were given time-served arrangements. With these deals, the defendants were granted their freedom, but gave up the right to clear their names. (Two additional men took similar deals but years later were fully exonerated after more exculpatory evidence was found in the police files.)</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>ProPublica’s examination of these cases reveals a troubling pattern — one that legal experts say plays out across the country. Persuasive innocence claims were met with refusals by the state’s attorney’s office to reexamine the cases, sometimes despite — or perhaps because of — discoveries of official misconduct. Prosecutors often fought for years to prevent the consideration of any new evidence or the testing of old evidence for DNA. Or they accommodated contrary new facts by stretching their theories of crimes. If the DNA in a rape case, for example, didn’t match the defendant, prosecutors would assert that another unknown assailant was involved, too. When judges ordered new trials or granted writs of innocence, prosecutors started bargaining for plea deals that would maintain the convictions.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Over time, prosecutors have defended their decision to seek deals, claiming in each case that they still believed in the defendants’ guilt. They also argued that given the amount of time passed, the cases would be difficult to retry.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>But Michele Nethercott, the head of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said with these cases, “often, the truth doesn’t seem to matter much.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="image medium right">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170917-george-seward-inline-8x10.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170917-george-seward-inline-8x10.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170917-george-seward-inline-8x10.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170917-george-seward-inline-8x10.jpg 1600w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>George Seward with his mother on the day of he got out of prison after 32 years. A judge had granted him a writ of innocence, but prosecutors vowed to retry him. He took an Alford plea to guarantee his immediate release.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Booth Ripke, courtesy of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3>George Seward</h3>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Convicted: 1985</li>
|
||
<li>Released: 2016</li>
|
||
<li>Type of Deal: Alford plea</li>
|
||
<li>Crime: Rape</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<h4>The Original Case</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>The white victim identified him 10 weeks after the crime. The victim’s ID of Seward, an 18-year-old black man who had a moustache and goatee at the time of the murder, conflicted with her contemporaneous description after the attack of a clean-shaven assailant. Neither the fingerprints nor biological evidence from the crime matched Seward.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>New Evidence Later Discovered</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Seward’s employment records as a part-time dog washer, which were discovered 12 years after the trial, showed he’d been at work the day of the shooting. His boss also testified she kept the shop locked and it would have been “impossible” for him to have left.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Prosecution Reaction</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Fought for the next 19 years, arguing, in turn, that the records weren’t admissible as new evidence and shouldn’t be given any consideration; that they didn’t provide an alibi because no hours were specified; and that they bolstered the case against Seward because the shop was near the victim’s house. One of the prosecutors on the case, John Cox, also told ProPublica that the records’ discovery so long after the trial meant they couldn’t be trusted.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said recently that because the victim saw her attacker up close, he wasn’t concerned that the case rested on a cross-racial identification. (That type of ID has been shown to be less reliable because people are generally bad at distinguishing facial features of people who aren’t their own race. Of the 351 people exonerated by DNA evidence since 1989, the national Innocence Project found that 41 percent had been convicted on mistaken cross-racial identification.)</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>How the Deal Happened</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Judge said the employment records “thoroughly exculpate[d]” Seward and granted a writ of innocence. The state appealed and eventually lost. “The state’s immediate reaction was to offer a plea,” said Shawn Armbrust, of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and one of Seward’s lawyers.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Shellenberger said that he’d been confident about the case and wanted to go to trial, but the victim didn’t want to testify again. “Keeping something on the record was extremely important to us.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Why Defendant Agreed to Deal</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Seward first turned prosecutors down, but then, as he awaited a new trial, a close friend was stabbed in prison. Seward had nine months before the trial began, so he reconsidered.</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="image medium right">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-barnes-inline2.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-barnes-inline2.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-barnes-inline2.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-barnes-inline2.jpg 1600w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>Barnes was convicted of murder when he was 17 based off of nothing more than his uncorroborated confession, which also described a violent rape.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Lexey Swall, special to ProPublica)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3>Jesse Barnes</h3>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Convicted: 1972</li>
|
||
<li>Released: 2011</li>
|
||
<li>Type of Deal: Time served</li>
|
||
<li>Crime: Murder</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<h4>The Original Case</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Based solely on Barnes’ confession made after 31 hours in custody. A largely illiterate 17-year-old with a low IQ and no prior record, Barnes’ police-typed statement conflicted with the evidence in the case in major ways, such as how and where the 15-year-old female victim was killed. And he had an alibi for the time of the murder. (Barnes’ confession also incriminated two others, but no one else was charged.)</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>New Evidence Later Discovered</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>In 2009, 37 years after Barnes’ conviction, DNA evidence collected from the victim’s body was tested and excluded him from any sexual assault, further undermining his confession, which had described a violent gang rape that included Barnes and another man ejaculating. The DNA, which only came from one male, also excluded one of the other teenagers implicated in Barnes’ statement.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Prosecution Reaction</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Prosecutor Sharon Holback said at the time that the state “vehemently and firmly believes that [Barnes] was fairly and properly convicted.” She argued that his confession was sound and that the third person implicated in it must have been the source for the DNA. That man couldn’t be found for comparison testing. (Holback was also the prosecutor who handled the post-conviction hearings in the case of James Thompson, whose rape and murder conviction was undermined by DNA testing, but was offered an Alford plea.)</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>How the Deal Happened</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Judge Yvette Bryant went many months without issuing a ruling on the case, so Barnes’ lawyer took the innocence claims directly to Gregg Bernstein, who recently had been elected as Baltimore City state’s attorney on a reform agenda and had started a conviction integrity unit. The fighting over Barnes’ post-conviction motions had happened under Bernstein’s predecessor, so he had not publicly committed to any position. He was also free of one common concern prosecutors face when dealing with potentially wrong convictions: angry relatives of the victim who don’t want the case to unravel. With Barnes, the victim’s family so believed in his innocence that they had hired a lawyer to defend him.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Bernstein, who said recently that he didn’t recall the case, would concede only that Barnes didn’t deserve to be in prison anymore, seizing on a mistake in sentencing. The judge who had sentenced Barnes had thought wrongly that his only option was life.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Why Defendant Agreed to Deal</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Barnes was 57 years old, had been in prison for more than 40 years and was in failing health. “I had to say to him ‘I’m confident in the end we will vindicate you, but it might be 1, 2 years or even 4 to 5 years, and there’s no guarantee,’” said Barnes’ pro bono lawyer, Michael Imbroscio, noting it was “the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had in my 22-year legal career.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="video medium right">
|
||
<div class="aspect-9-16">
|
||
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5pWG8so4fXo?rel=0&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<figcaption>Wendell Griffin walked out the back door of a Baltimore courtroom on May 23, 2012, free for the first time in nearly 31 years. Griffin, who’d been convicted of murder, was let out on a time-served deal after evidence pointing to his innocence was discovered buried in a police file.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Courtesy of Stephen Mercer)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3>Wendell Griffin</h3>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Convicted: 1982</li>
|
||
<li>Released: 2012</li>
|
||
<li>Type of Deal: Time served</li>
|
||
<li>Crime: Murder</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<h4>The Original Case</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>A neighbor testified that she saw Griffin before and after the murder with a gun, and a second neighbor, who was 150 feet away, said she heard Griffin make threatening remarks the night of the murder. A set of keys found about 90 feet from the crime scene was connected to Griffin, who lived in the neighborhood.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>New Evidence Later Discovered</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>In 2011, significant evidence was found in the police’s files that had never been given to the defense: three photo lineups in which eyewitnesses failed to identify Griffin and eight witness statements that either incriminated another suspect or contradicted the testimony used to prosecute Griffin.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>One eyewitness pointed to Griffin’s picture in the lineup and said that he looked like the suspect, “but it’s not him.” Griffin’s picture was nine years old, so detectives went back to that witness and showed her another array with a current picture. She still did not identify him. Nonetheless, detectives used her description of the suspect to get a search warrant for Griffin’s home — never mentioning that she’d twice failed to pick him out of a photo array. The warrant also cited a neighbor who saw a man with a gun, but left out that he said the man wasn’t Griffin.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>“There was pretty powerful evidence of innocence that was buried by the state,” Steve Mercer, Griffin’s attorney, said.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Prosecution Reaction</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Baltimore City prosecutor Michael Leedy denied that the evidence represented a Constitutional violation. (In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the state must turn over all favorable information to the defense in order for a trial to be fair, which has come to be known as the “Brady” requirement.) Leedy wouldn’t agree to a new trial.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>How the Deal Happened</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>When a judge, who called the evidence “earth shattering,” indicated she’d be ordering a new trial, Leedy shifted, saying that although he didn’t believe “there were, in fact, any Brady violations” the allegations were “plausible enough” that he’d “concede to a resentencing on this matter.” This was the “best course,” Leedy said, to “ensure that Mr. Griffin will for the rest of his life remain convicted for the murder of James Wise.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Leedy also wanted it on record that by accepting the deal Griffin gave up the right to an actual innocence ruling.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Why Defendant Agreed to Deal</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Griffin was 61, knew his best years were gone and he might “die in here.” Having spent nearly 31 years in prison, he didn’t have it in him, he said recently, to wait another year-and-a-half for a new trial. But he is now trying to withdraw his deal, so he can clear his name and sue over the Brady violations. Marilyn Mosby, the current state’s attorney who ran in part on a platform of police accountability, is fighting his motion. (Her spokeswoman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.) A hearing is set for November.</p>
|
||
|
||
<hr />
|
||
<figure class="image medium right">
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-antoine-pettiford-8x10.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170907-antoine-pettiford-8x10.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170907-antoine-pettiford-8x10.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170907-antoine-pettiford-8x10.jpg 1600w" />
|
||
|
||
<figcaption>Antoine Pettiford was convicted of murder in 1995, but was let out on an Alford plea three years later when a court ruled that the detectives and prosecutors deliberately withheld evidence from the defense. He was fully exonerated in 2000 after more evidence came to light. Pettiford was killed in 2015.
|
||
<span class="credit">(Jed Kirschbaum, permission from The Baltimore Sun)</span>
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3>Antoine Pettiford</h3>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Convicted: 1995</li>
|
||
<li>Released: 1998</li>
|
||
<li>Type of Deal: Alford plea (exonerated in 2000)</li>
|
||
<li>Crime: Murder</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Original Case</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Pettiford, 23 and with a record, was identified as one of two shooters by two eyewitnesses and was tied to the murder weapon by a suspect in a related crime. But at trial, the witnesses said they’d been mistaken and the suspect said he’d lied about the weapon. Late in the trial, prosecutors produced a new witness who identified Pettiford. Pettiford had an alibi and no motive.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>According to The Baltimore Sun, before the judge sentenced Pettiford to life plus 20 years, he said: “I don't care if every witness that appeared in the trial — including the detectives — come back here and say it was all a farce and it was all false and it was all wrong. I think justice was done.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>New Evidence Later Discovered</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>A year later, a separate federal drug investigation led to a different suspect in the murder, who pleaded guilty in federal court and told investigators that Pettiford had nothing to do with the crime.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>There was also evidence that had never been given to the defense: a three-page statement from a friend of the victim that said he was the intended target and pointed to the same suspect prosecuted by the feds; a police bulletin that named that same suspect in connection to the murder; a statement from an eyewitness who identified the second shooter as someone the federal prosecutors thought was involved; and a police report naming that second person as a suspect.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Prosecution Reaction</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Baltimore City prosecutor Nancy Pollack, who had handled the trial, didn’t act on the information federal prosecutors gave her suggesting Pettiford was innocent. Michelle Martz, Pettiford’s lawyer, said she went repeatedly “to beg and plead for [prosecutors at the time] to do something. I was floored the state wouldn’t be more concerned that they might have the wrong guy.”</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>How the Deal Happened</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>At the end of a post-conviction hearing, at which a detective revealed the existence of the three-page statement implicating someone else, the judge ordered Pollack to turn over everything in her files. Pollack agreed to a new trial and offered the plea.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>Why Defendant Agreed to Deal</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>Pettiford, scared of what the prosecutors might do during a second round, had only one question: “Do I have to go back to prison if I take it?” He accepted the Alford plea, walked down the courthouse steps and into his family’s waiting car.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h4>How He Was Later Exonerated</h4>
|
||
|
||
<p>A year after the Alford plea, The Baltimore Sun newspaper <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-07-11/news/9907110223_1_pettiford-secret-evidence-homicide-detectives/">exposed</a> that the state had suppressed even more evidence and that a detective had misled the defense. In response, the judge vacated the Alford plea, saying it had been “a miscarriage of justice,” and the state declined to prosecute again. Pollack, who declined to comment, had already resigned, but the Baltimore Police Department found that the detective did nothing wrong. That detective was also named in a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3241868-Burgess-Complaint.html">lawsuit</a> filed by Sabein Burgess, who was wrongfully convicted in 1995 and exonerated in 2014.</p>
|
||
<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6726892.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
||
<dc:subject>Criminal Justice</dc:subject>
|
||
<dc:date>2017-09-07T12:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
|
||
<dc:creator>by Megan Rose</dc:creator>
|
||
</item>
|
||
<item>
|
||
<title>ProPublica, NPR and BPL Presents to Host Maternal Health Forum With Advice for Expectant Families</title>
|
||
<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6726893</link>
|
||
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
|
||
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/atpropublica/propublica-npr-bpl-maternal-health-forum-advice-expectant-families#134406</guid>
|
||
<description><![CDATA[
|
||
<p class="byline">
|
||
by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/propublica">ProPublica</a> </p>
|
||
<p>By many measures, the U.S. has become the most dangerous place to give birth in the affluent world. Each year 700 to 900 American women die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes – up to 60 percent of which are preventable – and some 65,000 women nearly die.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>ProPublica and NPR have shined a light on this issue through the joint investigative series <a href="https://www.propublica.org/series/lost-mothers">Lost Mothers</a>, shifting the national conversation on maternal mortality from one of private tragedy to public health crisis. Now the news organizations are teaming up, in partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library’s <a href="https://www.bklynlibrary.org/bpl-presents">BPL Presents</a>, to host a community forum about protecting more women from harm.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Titled “<a href="https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/propublica-bpl-presents-central-library-dweck-102417">Lost Mothers: Key Ways to Improve Maternal Health</a>,” the event will bring together leading medical experts, survivors and impacted families. Panelists will share insights on topics including:</p>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>finding the best possible provider</li>
|
||
<li>strategies for self-advocacy and conveying levels of pain</li>
|
||
<li>changing the culture of the “perfect birth story”</li>
|
||
<li>preparing for an emergency</li>
|
||
<li>paying attention to symptoms even after the delivery</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p>The expert panel will also take questions from audience members seeking answers and support, and refreshments will be provided. This one-of-a-kind event encourages women and families to share their stories and connect with one another, and elevates a much-needed national dialogue.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a href="https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/propublica-bpl-presents-central-library-dweck-102417">This event is free. RSVP here.</a></p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>What:</strong> Lost Mothers: Key Ways to Improve Maternal Health</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>When:</strong> Tuesday, October 24, 7:30–9 p.m. (Doors open at 7 p.m.)</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Where:</strong> Brooklyn Public Library, Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (Stevan Dweck Auditorium)</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Who:</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>Mary D’Alton</strong>, MD, chair of Columbia University Medical Center’s department of obstetrics & gynecology</li>
|
||
<li><strong>Chanel Porchia-Albert</strong>, founder and executive director of Ancient Song Doula Services</li>
|
||
<li><strong>Larry Bloomstein</strong>, widower of Lauren Bloomstein, featured in <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/die-in-childbirth-maternal-death-rate-health-care-system">the first article of the series</a></li>
|
||
<li><strong>Nina Martin</strong>, reporter for ProPublica</li>
|
||
<li><strong>Renee Montagne</strong>, special correspondent for NPR</li>
|
||
<li>Other invited guests</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
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<p>This event will be livestreamed on both the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/propublica/">ProPublica</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BPLPresents/">BPL Presents</a> Facebook pages at 7:30 p.m. EST. For more information, contact Cynthia Gordy at <a href="mailto:cynthia.gordy@propublica.org">cynthia.gordy@propublica.org</a>.</p>
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<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6726893.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
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<dc:subject>Lost Mothers</dc:subject>
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<dc:date>2017-09-07T12:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
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<dc:creator>by ProPublica</dc:creator>
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</item>
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<item>
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<title>Another Thing Disappearing From Rural America: Maternal Care</title>
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<link>http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9499/6726894</link>
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<pubDate>Tue, 05 Sep 2017 20:01:41 +0000</pubDate>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.propublica.org/article/another-thing-disappearing-from-rural-america-maternal-care#134362</guid>
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<description><![CDATA[
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<p class="byline">
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by <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/adriana-gallardo">Adriana Gallardo</a> and <a class="name" href="https://www.propublica.org/people/nina-martin">Nina Martin</a> </p>
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<p>Maternity care is disappearing from America’s rural counties, and for the 28 million women of reproductive age living in those areas, pregnancy and childbirth are becoming more complicated — and more dangerous. That’s the upshot of a <a href="http://bit.ly/2wGCoZD">new report</a> from the <a href="http://rhrc.umn.edu/">Rural Health Research Center</a> at the University of Minnesota that examined obstetric services in the nation’s 1,984 rural counties over a 10-year period. In 2004, 45 percent of rural counties had no hospitals with obstetric services; by 2014, that figure had jumped to 54 percent. The decline was greatest in heavily black counties and in states with the strictest eligibility rules for Medicaid.</p>
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<p>The decrease in services has enormous implications for women and families, says <a href="https://directory.sph.umn.edu/bio/sph-a-z/katy-kozhimannil">Katy B. Kozhimannil</a>, an associate professor in health policy who directs the Minnesota center’s research efforts. Rural areas have higher rates of chronic conditions that make pregnancy more challenging, higher rates of childbirth-related hemorrhages — and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/maternal-health-care-is-disappearing-in-rural-america/">higher rates</a> of maternal and infant deaths. And because rural counties tend to be poorer, any efforts to revamp or slash Medicaid could hit rural mothers especially hard. We spoke with Kozhimannil about the new study and the implications for maternal care. (The conversation has been edited and condensed.)</p>
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<p><strong>You and your colleagues have been looking at maternal health issues for several years. What’s the most surprising part of this new study?</strong></p>
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<p>I was surprised about the findings on race. Being aware of structural racism in U.S. health care, I shouldn’t have been. But we found that hospitals are more likely to close their doors entirely or close their obstetric units in communities that have more black residents. Rural black communities also experience some of the poorest birth outcomes in the country, especially in the Southeast.</p>
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<p>I think [the race findings] are new and really important. In all the discussions I've had around maternity care access, I think there's often a false association of “rural” with white communities and with farming, but that doesn't represent the demographic reality of rural America, which is very diverse. There are 10 million people of color in rural America, that’s about 20 percent of all rural Americans.</p>
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<p><strong>What has led to the decline in rural obstetric services more broadly over this 10-year period?</strong></p>
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<p>We didn’t choose this period because we thought it was particularly unique. We chose it because it was the most recent decade of data we could get. That said, this was a period when there was a substantial shift in the health care delivery system. The debates around Obamacare, the implementation, the threats to repeal — all that really created instability with respect to what hospitals and clinicians were expecting around payments.</p>
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<p>And the role of finances is key. If hospitals want to offer obstetric services, they need to be ready for a baby to be born at any time — they need to have a bed available, the equipment available for mom and for baby, clinicians and staff available that have the necessary skills. That's a substantial expense. If a hospital’s revenues are limited because it has a low volume of births — as many rural hospitals do — or if revenues are unpredictable, that creates a really difficult administrative problem.</p>
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<figure class="image full left">
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<img alt="" src="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170905-rural-care-QA-graphic.jpg" srcset="https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo400w/20170905-rural-care-QA-graphic.jpg 400w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo800w/20170905-rural-care-QA-graphic.jpg 800w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo1600w/20170905-rural-care-QA-graphic.jpg 1600w, https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170905-rural-care-QA-graphic.jpg 2000w" />
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<figcaption>There were 898 counties that had no in-county hospital obstetric services in the study period (“no services”). There were 907 counties that had at least one in-county hospital that provided obstetric services in the study period (“continual services”). There were 179 counties in which all in-county hospital obstetric services closed during the study period (“full closure”). Significance refers to differences in county characteristics in the same year compared to counties with continual hospital obstetric services during 2004-14. Urban counties are not in the study sample.
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<span class="credit">(Health Affairs)</span>
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p><strong>How does Medicaid play into this?</strong></p>
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<p>Medicaid funds about half of all births in the United States, and an even greater percentage of births in rural hospitals. Medicaid funding for births is incredibly important and it’s one factor in hospitals’ decisions around whether to keep obstetric services. We found that rural counties in states with more generous Medicaid programs — with higher income eligibility limits for pregnant women — were less likely to lose hospital-based obstetric services.</p>
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<p><strong>Meanwhile, there’s talk of allowing states to impose new rules that could restrict access to Medicaid.</strong></p>
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<p>Changes to the financing of Medicaid would likely have big negative effects on the availability of obstetric services in rural areas. Based on our study, the generosity of a state’s Medicaid program seems directly linked to access to maternity care in rural counties. As such, any new reductions or restrictions on Medicaid funding or services may affect rural hospital financing.</p>
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<p><strong>What is it like to be pregnant in a rural area that doesn’t have adequate maternity care? What do women do?</strong></p>
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<p>For some women, there may be a nearby clinic or their general practitioner may be able to see them for prenatal visits if they have a low-risk pregnancy. But then they need to give birth in a more distant area with a different set of providers.</p>
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<p>That may not even be a choice for women who live in communities that don't have any providers that see pregnant patients, or for women that have higher risk complications that require more specialized care.</p>
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<p>I remember talking to one woman who lived in rural northern Minnesota and who had a preterm birth with her first pregnancy. For her second pregnancy, she had to drive two hours to the nearest hospital with a high-risk obstetrician. With one child at home already, and a full-time job and a partner who worked, it was almost untenable. It would take a whole day for her to drop her child off at daycare, drive all the way to the hospital, wait for a 15-minute visit that felt rushed, then drive all the way back.</p>
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<p>I just heard on the radio this morning that a truck ran into a railroad bridge that goes over the highway that this woman would take to go back and forth to the hospital. So if she was pregnant right now, there's a 27-mile detour on three dirt roads to get around this broken bridge. That adds probably another 45 minutes to an already two-hour drive. Things like that can happen, you know, all the time.</p>
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<p><strong>What about giving birth? How does living in a remote area affect the kinds of choices doctors and women make?</strong></p>
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<p>In a typical childbirth education class in an urban area, childbirth educators say things like, “Go to the hospital when your contractions are five minutes apart.” None of that makes any sense in a rural context where women give birth far from home.</p>
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<p>For rural moms, a lot of the conversation in childbirth education and in prenatal care revolves around logistics and transportation: “Do you know how you’re going to get to your appointment? Do you have access to a car? Is your car reliable? Do you have money for gas? Do you have a backup plan if your car doesn't start? Do you have someone that you can call if you need to go in quickly?”</p>
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<p>Anecdotally, I hear a lot about labor induction. The rural physicians I’ve talked to are like, “I can't believe I am trying to talk patients into having an induction.” They believe in letting labor start naturally, but given the long drive, induction is often better for patients clinically. So that if complications come up, someone’s there, monitoring your blood pressure and vital signs. It’s not, you know, your partner or friend desperately driving down dirt roads as fast as they can while you yell in the back seat.</p>
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<p><strong>How does all this affect outcomes for babies?</strong></p>
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<p>We have good information from Canada that the women who have to drive long distances to give birth have higher rates of the babies being in the neonatal intensive care unit, and even of infant mortality. And so we know that distance is associated with outcomes of care. When rural hospitals close the doors of their maternity units, women have to drive longer distances.</p>
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<p><strong>These seem like pretty huge hurdles for rural mothers and babies. Is there any way to address these problems to improve maternity care?</strong></p>
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<p>One idea is programs to support pregnant women and families, especially with respect to their housing and transportation needs when they live far away from where they're going to give birth. Alaska has actually done a tremendous job of this.</p>
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<p>Another is for states to allow midwives and nurse practitioners to play a greater role in offering prenatal and postpartum care, without having to be under a doctor’s supervision. That would be useful. Our prior research shows that midwives, for example, attend births at about one-third of all rural hospitals, and that hospital administrators would like to expand the role midwives play.</p>
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<p>State and federal programs to support the rural maternity workforce are crucial. There ought to be programs to support training in emergency births in rural communities that lose obstetric care, and to support the costs of providing maternity care in communities where there are willing providers.</p>
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<img src="http://feedpress.me/9499/6726894.gif" height="1" width="1"/>]]></description>
|
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<dc:subject>Lost Mothers</dc:subject>
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<dc:date>2017-09-05T20:01:41+00:00</dc:date>
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<dc:creator>by Adriana Gallardo and Nina Martin</dc:creator>
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