Public Press wins national award

The San Francisco Public Press has won an award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Last month, the group recognized our reporters and editors with a national Prevention for a Safer Society award for their articles on experiments in San Francisco with “restorative justice,” an alternative method for dealing with youth misbehavior in schools. 

The series, produced in collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., delved into alternative, nonpunitive routes that the city’s schools are taking to mediate conflict among students and prevent suspensions and expulsions.

In the lead story, “Bucking a punitive trend, San Francisco lets students own up to misdeeds instead of getting kicked out of school,” lead reporter Jeremy Adam Smith revealed that through innovative new approaches involving counseling and confronting peers, San Francisco schools achieved some of the lowest expulsion rates in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Public Press reporter T.J. Johnston and editors Rich Pestorich and Michael Stoll, as well as the Center for Public Integrity’s Susan Ferris, also received recognition for their work on the report.