Our most important journalism this year

I’ve waited seven months to say this, but we are about to dazzle you with what likely will be our most important journalism this year.

For six weeks beginning Monday, April 29, we’ll give you an unprecedented, up-close tour of the juvenile justice system in Cuyahoga County, through the eyes of the children and teenagers who go through it.

This is special stuff. You’ve never read anything like it.

The goal, when we set out, was to answer a question that gets posed regularly: Why, with everything we have invested as a community in reforming errant children long before they become violent criminals, do many slip through the cracks?

City Councilwoman Stephanie Howse might be the most vocal leader on the issue, repeatedly noting that we don’t do enough to understand what causes a youth to become violent. She said it quite clearly in a 2022 council meeting: “We can’t even begin to change the trajectory of this city because we cannot fundamentally ask the question ‘What happened to you… You cannot change anything you do not understand.”

Our series answers that fundamental question and offers insights into how to change the trajectory.

The series -- “Delinquent: Our System, Our Kids” – is the third installment in our newsroom’s long-term focus on children at risk.

Our 2017-2018 series, “A Greater Cleveland,” brought you into the homes of children growing up in poverty, as we highlighted the overwhelming challenges their parents and caregivers face in trying to break a cycle of multigenerational destitution.

In 2022 and 2023, “Cleveland’s Promise” took you into a Cleveland classroom for two full school years, to understand the difficulties of educating children in poverty.

Now we tackle what pushes youth into criminality and violence.

We asked the project reporters to transport readers back in time to when violent criminals in the juvenile justice system were young children, before they first got into trouble, to identify the touchpoints when someone might have helped them thrive.

We originally hoped to pull the story together with records and, with any luck, interviews with lawyers for the youthful offenders.

Instead, the reporters obtained countless illuminating documents not ordinarily available to the public, and they got the stories straight from the sources – the offenders themselves. Reporters engaged in detailed conversations with 50 of them. Many are adults now. And many were adjudicated as adults when they were children and sent to adult prisons.

On cleveland.com, we will feature a different offender each weekday, with each case exemplifying a theme the reporters uncovered. The themes point to places where the system breaks down as well as where it works. (Each Sunday, we will assemble the five pieces into a single story in The Plain Dealer, as well as online.)

We have a talented team on this project.

Many readers know the work of Kaitlin Durbin, who in just a few years in our newsroom has produced some of our most significant journalism. It was Kaitlin’s reporting that helped stop Cuyahoga County from building a new jail on a site so toxic that the state would not put a prison there. It was her reporting on youths sleeping in a county office building that persuaded county officials to come up with a genuine solution for youths with no place to go. She’s one of the most dedicated journalists working in Cleveland today.

John Tucker is a criminal justice reporter who, before joining our newsroom, wrote in-depth stories for some of the nation’s top magazines. He’s one of the best writers we’ve seen. We asked during his interview why he wanted to move away from magazines to do beat reporting in Cleveland, and he said he wanted to practice journalism where he could follow up on its impact. I’m pretty sure he’s about to get his wish.

Regular readers on our platforms know well the work of illustrator Andrew Levy, who deserves a museum exhibit for her portfolio. Illustrators are storytellers in their own right. Their job is not to draw photo-realistic images of what’s in the stories. Rather, it is to draw on their creativity and experiences to interpret the content, to evoke mood and help explore themes. Andrea has produced three dozen images for this series, and they are breathtaking.

Leila Atassi is the project editor. She was the chief reporter on A Greater Cleveland and the editor for Cleveland’s Promise, so she is the natural choice to collaborate with the content creators here. She’s also the best writer I’ve worked with in four decades of journalism.

Putting Kaitlin, John, Andrea and Leila together on anything pretty much guarantees great work, but, this is that rare piece of journalism that far exceeds my original hope for it. The team has come back with something extraordinary.

I should note that this is not a “gotcha” project. We are not calling out villains here. The Juvenile Justice system is filled with dedicated public servants who want youth to thrive. They balance the needs of the youths versus the needs of the community, often without enough resources to get the job done. Our goal is to help this community analyze the system and identify solutions.

We’re grateful to the many people who helped us. The Public Defedner's Office and the judges and staff at Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court provided access to files not available under the state records law. The records include bountiful details that are critical to our storytelling. Many public employees fear reporters looking under the hood, but the people at the court are confident in their work.

Of course, vital to the success of this series are the youths and their parents who talked so freely with Kaitlin and John. Their stories are soul-crushing. Some said they talked because they want to help future generations avoid their missteps.

Notably, Cuyahoga County’s Department of Children and Family Services did not cooperate with us. I spent more than year trying to negotiate that cooperation, without success. The county has been criticized frequently over the years for its failures with children, and I suspect county officials feared what we might learn in their confidential records. They clearly did not have the same confidence as those at Juvenile Court. Ultimately, Kaitlin and John were so effective in their reporting, we did not need the county’s help to tell this story.

Finally, no part of this series will be behind a pay wall. We want it in front of anyone wishing to see it. That means you can read it online in its entirety for free, but please know it was not free to produce. Removing two of our best reporters from daily responsibilities for seven months is a hardship. (I thank Lucas Daprile, Olivia Mitchell and Molly Walsh for filling the gap.) And while the people involved in this project worked tirelessly, they did not work for free.

If you are a paid subscriber to our platforms, I hope you feel pride that you support this kind of journalism. If you don’t subscribe and want to support this kind of journalism, thank you and you can sign up here.

And come April 29, prepare to be riveted.

I'm at cquinn@cleveland.com

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