Hi r/IAmA! We’ve organized an AMA with Bloomberg Law reporters Mackenzie Mays, Diana Dombrowski, Alexia Fernandez Campbell, and data journalist Andrew Wallender.
They built a new database of more than 200,000 civil rights complaints filed in federal court and used it to uncover cases that were previously scattered or hard to track. Their reporting led to three major investigations so far:
- Deadly pregnancies in jails, where women and their babies suffered preventable harm under government care
- Children being strip‑searched in schools for minor or even baseless allegations
- The Wrap, a full-body restraint used to subdue people, where we uncovered fatal outcomes following its use
The AMA is happening over in r/journalism at 2 p.m. ET today.
Please ask your questions there, not here — comments on this post will be locked.
Join here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Journalism/comments/1rgbx2i/we_built_a_firstofitskind_database_of_200000/
They’re happy to answer questions about the methodology, records work, programming, data analysis, LLM use, reporting process, or anything else you’re curious about from the stories.
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