Pulitzer Center Update July 1, 2021
Applying Trauma Ethics in Prison Reporting
On June 30, 2021, the Pulitzer Center hosted this discussion on the challenges of reporting on prisons around the world. The event featured:
— Sarah Shourd, a trauma-informed investigative journalist, playwright, and 2019 Stanford JSK Knight fellow whose most recent Pulitzer Center-supported project, Dying for Justice in America's Jails, investigates how decarceration and the rash of preventable COVID-19 deaths in jails and prisons have exposed that death by suicide, brutality, and medical neglect in our nation's jails is far from new or specific to the pandemic.
— Sukanya Shantha, senior assistant editor at The Wire. Her Pulitzer Center-supported series, Barred – A Prisons Project, sheds light on the extreme living conditions, lack of medical care and legal support, and violence within India's prison system.
— Justine van der Leun, whose project, ‘No Choice but to Do It’: How Women Are Criminalized for Surviving, interrogates the ways in which abuse, misogyny, and structural inequalities result in punishment of the most marginalized. Van der Leun is an independent journalist and a fellow at Type Media Center.
— H R Venkatesh, a journalist at the Indian publication BOOM Live and an International Center for Journalists Knight fellow, moderated the discussion.