Honored for our investigations into violence and dysfunction in the Mississippi prison system. By The Marshall Project The Marshall Project was awarded the prestigious Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting on Tuesday night for our series on one of the most dangerous and dysfunctional penal systems in the country. The $25,000 award, which honors the best in public interest journalism, will be split among reporting teams at The Marshall Project and Mississippi Today, who led the investigations. The work also appeared in the Jackson Clarion Ledger, the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, and the USA Today Network. The judging committee cited “outstanding, deeply reported, data-backed storytelling, and the direct impact this series is having on public policy reforms in Mississippi.” They honored the way reporters made policy failures real to readers by telling specific stories of individuals within the penal system. “These stories gave faces and names to systemic failures, the reporting of which were backed up by cutting edge data journalism and dogged shoe-leather reporting,” the judges said. “The series brings readers an understanding of what it’s like to be inside Mississippi’s troubled penal system. One judge noted that this series ‘shows in visceral terms why you can't get ahead in a system like this.’”