"An Unbelievable Story of Rape" T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and
Ken Armstrong of
The Marshall Project collaborated on this piece about the process that discovered a serial rapist in Colorado and Washington state. The piece won a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. This piece was adapted into the 2019
Netflix series
Unbelievable.
Bias with COMPAS software In 2016, ProPublica published an investigation of the
COMPAS algorithm used by
U.S. courts to assess the likelihood of a
defendant becoming a
recidivist. Led by
Julia Angwin, the investigation found that "blacks are almost twice as likely as whites to be labeled a higher risk but not actually re-offend," whereas COMPAS "makes the opposite mistake among whites: They are much more likely than blacks to be labeled lower-risk but go on to commit other crimes." They also found that only 20 percent of people predicted to commit violent crimes actually went on to do so.
Psychiatric Solutions ProPublica conducted a large-scale, circumscribed investigation on
Psychiatric Solutions, a company based in Tennessee that buys failing hospitals, cuts staff, and accumulates profit. The report covered patient deaths at numerous Psychiatric Solutions facilities, the failing physical plant at many of their facilities, and covered the
State of Florida's first closure of
Manatee Palms Youth Services, which has since been shut down by Florida officials once again. Their report was published in conjunction with the
Los Angeles Times.
Documenting Hate In 2017, ProPublica launched the
Documenting Hate project for systematic tracking of
hate crimes and
bias incidents. The project is part of their Civil Rights beat, and allows victims or witnesses of hate crime incidents to submit stories. The project also allows journalists and newsrooms to partner with ProPublica to write stories based on the dataset they are collecting. For example, the Minneapolis
Star Tribune partnered with ProPublica to write about reporting of hate crimes in Minnesota.
Surgeon Scorecard In 2015, ProPublica launched Surgeon Scorecard, an interactive database that allows users to view complication rates for eight common elective procedures. The tool allows users to find surgeons and hospitals, and see their complication rates. The database was controversial, drawing criticism from doctors and prompting a critique from
RAND. However, statisticians, including
Andrew Gelman, stood behind their decision to attempt to shine light on an opaque aspect of the medical field, and ProPublica offered specific rebuttals to RAND's claims.
Tracking evictions and rent stabilization in New York City ProPublica has created an interactive map that allows people to search for addresses in New York City to see the effects of eviction cases. The app was nominated for a
Livingston Award.
Taxes paid by wealthiest Americans In June 2021, after receiving leaked, hacked, or stolen
IRS documents, ProPublica published a report which claimed that tax rates for the wealthiest Americans were significantly lower than the average middle class tax rate, if unrealized
capital gains are considered as equivalent to
earned income. ProPublica would later reveal that technology investor and political donor
Peter Thiel legally earned more than $5 billion in a tax-free
Roth IRA account through his investments in private companies. Attorney General
Merrick Garland told lawmakers that investigating the source of the release would be a top priority for the Justice Department.
Juvenile Court Judge policies jail innocent black children Research by ProPublica and
Nashville Public Radio found juvenile incarcerations in
Rutherford County, Tennessee, to be far higher than the national average. The investigation, published in October 2021 as "Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge", revealed that county authorities had charged some of the children under non-existent laws, as directed by Judge
Donna Scott Davenport, and that, among Tennessee children referred to juvenile court, the statewide rate of incarceration was five percent, while in Rutherford County it was 48 percent. The article was a finalist in the 2022
National Magazine Awards. Reportage continued by
podcast, with
The Kids of Rutherford County.
Cancer-causing industrial air pollution map In 2021, ProPublica published the results of a two-year analytical project involving examining billions of rows of EPA data to create a map to chart industrial pollution at the neighborhood level – the first of its kind. In five years' worth of EPA data, ProPublica identified over 1,000 toxic hotspots nationwide, estimating that 250,000 people living near these areas may have been exposed to levels of cancer risk that the EPA deems unacceptable. ProPublica intended to represent data in a way where the public can understand the risk of breathing the air where they live. Through the map, the town of
Verona, Missouri was identified to have an industrial cancer risk 27 times larger than the acceptable value. Subsequently, the EPA agreed to install three air monitors to track ethylene oxide concentration in Verona. Additional "hot spots" identified on the map include the city of
Longview in eastern Texas; the most high-risk area of Longview has a risk level 72 times greater than the EPA's acceptable risk. This most high-risk area is the home of Texas Eastman Chemical Plant. According to ProPublica, its analysis of the plant's emissions detected
ethylene oxide and
1-3 butadiene. The Texas Eastman Chemical Plant says it has conducted its own tests which "have revealed no areas of concern."
Gina Haspel and subsequent retractions In 2017, ProPublica published an investigative report detailing the involvement of
Gina Haspel in
enhanced interrogation techniques at a black site in Thailand. The report focused particularly on the harsh methods used on
Abu Zubaydah, including waterboarding, confinement in small boxes, and wall slamming. In 2018, ProPublica retracted part of its 2017 report and said that Haspel had not taken over control of the black site until after Abu Zubaydah interrogation had ended. This retraction came after Haspel was nominated to lead the
CIA, sparking renewed scrutiny of her record. The
Associated Press (AP),
The New York Times,
NBC and
The Atlantic made similar corrections to stories they had published about Haspel's time as head of the Thai black site.
The Repatriation Project In 2023, ProPublica launched an investigative series uncovering the complexities and delays in repatriating Native American remains and cultural items under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (
NAGPRA). The series exposed institutional resistance from museums and universities, driving significant policy discussions and increased efforts toward compliance. This investigative work earned Mary Hudetz the Richard LaCourse Award for Investigative Journalism from the Indigenous Journalists Association in July 2024. Partner organizations selected in 2024 include The Current in Georgia,
Idaho Statesman,
The Salt Lake Tribune,
Street Roots in Oregon, and
Tennessee Lookout. The network subsidizes salary and benefits for reporters, who must apply together with a local news organization. Work from the Network's partnership with the Anchorage Daily News won the 2020
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. ==See also==