Category: prisoners

The AP's Michael Biesecker did some good digging to come up with horrible details on the treatment of mentally ill prisoners in North Carolina. But did the story undersell the reporting? In other words, was Biesecker's story as strong as it possibly could have been, or did he stumble?

Here's the lede, in a version of the story that appeared on www.newsobserver.com:

RALEIGH -- An internal review of conditions inside North Carolina's Central Prison found that inmates with serious mental illnesses were neglected by staff and locked away in fetid cells.

Had I not been tipped that this was a good...