Category: News

Check out Gillian Tett’s Financial Times column about how The Marshall Project represents “the birth of a new media species.”

“I for one hope that Barsky’s venture flourishes – and not just because there is a burning need to start a more thoughtful conversation about the criminal justice system in the US,” Tett writes. “In a world increasingly ruled by celebrity soundbites, the sight of entrepreneurs trying to start national debates about complex, weighty matters is to be celebrated; not least because this was not something media doomsters might have expected a decade ago.”

Marshall Project editor in chief Bill Keller has an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times. Bill writes about New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s weak attempt to allocate $1 million toward offering prisoners a college education. Bill reviews the backlash on the part of myopic legislators who intimidated the governor into withdrawing the proposal.

“The larger shame is the deep American ambivalence about the very purpose of prison,” Bill writes. “Considering that the United States is the world’s leading warden, we should be able to answer with some conviction this question: What is prison for?”

Read the entire op-ed here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/opinion/college-for-criminals.html