AL.com is one of five recipients nationwide of the 2023 Lipman Center grants to fund reporting on inequalities and misconduct in the American criminal justice system.

The grants are awarded each year by the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights and the Columbia Journalism School.

AL.com journalists John Archibald, Ivana Hrynkiw and Ramsey Archibald, working with investigative editor Challen Stephens, will use the $32,000 grant to fund reporting on the Alabama parole system, which does little to alleviate overcrowding in the state’s troubled prison system. The funding will cover costs for data acquisition, analysis, and visualization, additional staff, Freedom of Information Act requests, travel or other reporting needs.

“We’re grateful for the financial support and partnership,” said Kelly Ann Scott, editor and vice president of Alabama Media Group. “Local journalism is at the heart of American journalism – and this kind of support enables news organizations like ours to dive deep into an issue that matters here in Alabama.

“The prisons and parole conversation in our state affects families, lives, policies and politics – we’re eager to tell that story.”

Members of the grantee selection committee were Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb; Nina Alvarez, CBS Assistant Professor of International Journalism; David Hajdu, Professor of Journalism; and Dolores Barclay, project manager of the Lipman Center and adjunct associate professor of journalism.

“We are thrilled to support AL.com’s timely and crucial investigation into a horrific injustice in our criminal justice system that needs to be told,” said Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School and Henry Luce Professor of Journalism. “AL.com has a proven record for its meticulous reporting and inspired writing, and we are excited to see the outcome of this project.”

AL.com received a Lipman grant in 2021 that helped fund the reporting of Banking on Crime, a series that examines policing for profit and the criminalization of poverty in Alabama. The series includes AL.com’s award-winning investigation of predatory policing in the small town of Brookside, reporting that freed people from jail and prompted Alabama legislators to pass new laws.

The other recipients of the 2023 Lipman grants are The California Newsroom; Mother Jones; and independent journalists Tasmiha Khan, and Daniel Moritz-Rabson with Lauren Gill.