The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "prison guards" ...
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Scandal in Illinois Workers' Compensation System
More than 230 guards at the Menard Correctional Center, a maximum security Illinois prison, claimed to have acquired carpal tunnel syndrome of the wrist by turning keys or operating cell locking mechanisms. These claims resulted in in taxpayer-funded partial disability payments totaling more than $10 million paid to guards who returned to work full-time operating the same locks.
Tags: Menard Correctional Center; prison; carpal tunnel syndrome
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Prison Workers Compensation Investigation
The reporters find that hundreds of guards at a Illinois maximum security prison were receiving large taxpayer-funded injury awards for carpal tunnel syndrome they claimed came from unlocking cell doors. The state had spent $30.6 million on these settlements over three years. As a result of the investigation, the Illinois Department of Insurance launched a civil and criminal investigation.
Tags: injury awards; state prisons; settlements; Menard Correctional Center; workers compensation
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Trapped in Tamms
The Tamms Correctional Center is touted as housing some of the worst criminals in the state. Yet state research revealed that many of the inmates were mentally ill and were left untreated. Lengthy consecutive sentences were frequently handed to prisoners who spit or threw body wastes at guards. Food and water was also withheld from inmates and punishments were often excessive.
Tags: Tamms; prisoners; correctional center; abuse; mental illness; crime; punishment; inmate; wastes; Anthony Gay;
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Agriprocessors and Beyond: Inside the Kosher Meat Industry
This series of articles looked inside the kosher meat industry, a quietly guarded world worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The reporting began two years ago when the Forward's Nathaniel Popper wrote about the working conditions at the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa, setting off a wide-ranging debate in Jewish community. The paper has continued to follow the problems at Agriprocessors and reported early in 2008 on the debate withing the kosher industry about a widely used but apparently cruel method of kosher slaughter known as shackled and hoist. Then, in the middle of the year, federal agents, citing the Forward's reporting raided the Agriprocessors' plant in Iowa. Since the raid, the Forward has followed each legal development, but has also reported on elements of the story that were being overlooked. The first such article detailed the way in which Agriprocessors had handled immigrants and unions at its Brooklyn warehouse-sparking a case that went to the Supreme Court. The next set of articles investigated the working conditions in the rest of the kosher eat industry, with particular attention paid to the labor battles at Agriprocessors' biggest competitor, Alle Processing, which had been completely ignored. The article and chart on industry-wide conditions were the first effort to systematically set down the relative size and production of the major players in the kosher meat industry. The Forward also wrote a lengthy report on the immigrant workers from Agriprocessors who had been released from prison and ordered to testify in federal court against their supervisors, but were given no means to support themselves before the hearing date. After Agriprocessors declared bankruptcy, the Forward reported on the unnoticed consequences for the town and its inhabitants, from the lowly turkeys to the local bankers.
Tags: meat processing; kosher meat; agriculture; Agriprocessors; meatpacking; immigrant workers
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36 years of Solitary: Murder, Death and Injustice on Angola
A young guard at Louisiana's Angola prison was slain four decades ago and the two men convicted were sentenced to 36 years in solitary confinement. This series uncovers evidence in the case which may free the men of their sentences.
Tags: Brent Miller; correction facility; prison; jail; Herman Wallace; Albert Woodfox; racially charged;
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I Lit the Fire: Jared Petrovich Admits His Role in the Killing of John Chamberlain. But why did he target the gay?
These four articles probed the culture of violence at tTheo Lacy Men's Jail in Orange, CA, beginning with an exclusive interview of Jared Petrovich, the accuse ringleader of the Oct. 5, 2006 murder of John Chamberlain, an inmate suspected of child molestation who was brutally beated inside the jail. That story included combined interviews with Petrovich and other inmates and guards at the facility with transcripts and notes of interviews with inmates and guards that the reporter obtained from lawyers representing inmates, including Petrovich, who were charged in the attack. The article contained allegations that Deputy Kevin Taylor, a prison guard who was never charged in the crime, told Petrovich that Chamberlain was a child molester, and that Taylor routinely use inmates like Petrovich to enforce prison rules and mete out punishment to various inmates. Petrovich provided an example of this behavior that I did not include in my original story, alleging that Taylor had known about--and approved--a previous beating of an inmate in Sept. 2006. He only knew the inmate's first name--Mark--but claimed the inmate had been a guitarist for the rock band Kiss. He claimed another inmate, nicknamed "Sick Dog" had witnessed Taylor being informed of the planned attack and, after it was carried out, rewarding the inmates with sack lunches. Through a California Public Records Act request, the reporter obtained the Sheriff Department's jail file on the beaten inmate, Mark Leslie Norton, aka Mark St. John of the rock band Kiss, and found information which corroborated Petrovich's account of the incident, and obtained his death certificate. St. John died of a brain hemorrhage several months after being released.
Tags: prison beatings; rock band Kiss; California; prisoner brutality; bribe; prison regulation
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Prison Cover-UP
Hurrican Rita was on her way. But prisoners in the federal penitentiary in Beaumont were not evacuated and lived in some horrendous conditions. Prison officials lied to prisoners' relatives and the news media, first by saying prisoners had been moved to safer quarters and then by saying conditions inside the prison were fine. The prisoners' accounts were later verified by prison guards.
Tags: prison; inmate abuse; hurricane rita; inmates in jeopardy; poor treatment; negligence
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Living Nightmare
This investigation exposes a dramatic revenge plot, in which a Fresno County jail guard spent nearly ten months sending at least a dozen racially charged letters to violent gang members, all in the name of machine operator Paul Perry, who angered the guard over a traffic ticket.
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Man Down
This investigation tells the story of Thomas Jones, and inmate at the D.C. Jail. One day he collapsed while playing basketball and, later that evening, died of a heart attack. This investigation sheds light on how officers at the jail failed to save his life.
Tags: jail; prison guards; inmates; medical response; CPR
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Torture in Maine's Prison
Inamtes at the Maine State Prison's Supermax facility are brutally tortured. The reporter interviewing the prisoners was banned by the prison, and shipped the prisoner who was the major source to an out of state facility.
Tags: beating; jail; security guard; abuse; department of correction; smuggle; Warren, Maine; Deane Brown