Louisiana locks up more people than any other state, nearly twice the national average. If it were a country, it would have the highest incarceration rate in the world. One in 86 Louisianans is behind bars, and one in every 14 black men from New Orleans is serving time.

Cindy Chang, Jan Moller, Jonathan Tilove, and John Simerman of the New Orleans Times-Picayune set out to explain why their state locks up so many people. Their Sidney-Award-winning series, Louisiana INCarcerated, explores the powerful institutional forces that interact to keep incarceration levels sky high. Louisiana is the only state where local sheriffs build and run prisons for profit.

The state pays the sheriffs a per diem of $24.39 per prisoner, a fraction of what it spends to house prisoners in state facilities. The prisons provide jobs for the sheriffs’ constituents and their revenues fund local law enforcement. Not surprisingly, the sheriffs lobby fiercely for longer sentences. Without a steady influx of prisoners, their prisons will lose money.

This series paints an unflinching portrait of a justice system corrupted by the pursuit of profit.

Louisiana INCarcerated may be a swan song for The Times-Picayune, which announced yesterday that it wll be laying off a third of its workforce. The paper will soon cut back to three print editions a week, making New Orleans the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper.

“The prison series was only possible because the newspaper invested tremendous time and resources,” special projects reporter Cindy Chang said, “Of course, we’re concerned that with major staff cuts and an emphasis on constant blogging, this may be our last project.”

[Photo credit: Editor B, Creative Commons.]

Today and tomorrow, I will be blogging from the ninth annual Personal Democracy Forum in New York City. The event bills itself as the world’s premiere forum on the nexus of democracy, politics, social advocay and public life. The theme of this year’s forum is “The Internet’s New Political Power.” Panels will grapple with issues ranging from internet freedom in China to online consumer organizing to political fundraising in the digital age. Stay tuned.

Pam Belluck’s outstanding story on the science of the morning after pill and the politics of its labelling sits at the nexus of investigative and science reporting and embodies the best of both traditions:

But an examination by The New York Times has found that the federally approved labels and medical Web sites do not reflect what the science shows. Studies have not established that emergency contraceptive pills prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb, leading scientists say. Rather, the pills delay ovulation, the release of eggs from ovaries that occurs before eggs are fertilized, and some pills also thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble swimming.

It turns out that the politically charged debate over morning-after pills and abortion, a divisive issue in this election year, is probably rooted in outdated or incorrect scientific guesses about how the pills work. Because they block creation of fertilized eggs, they would not meet abortion opponents’ definition of abortion-inducing drugs. In contrast, RU-486, a medication prescribed for terminating pregnancies, destroys implanted embryos. [NYT]

Back in October, I reviewed the research on the workings of the morning after pill to settle an argument with some friends. I came to the same conclusions as Belluck. A body of elegant in vitro and in vivo experiments in tissues, animals, and humans show that the morning after pill (aka high-dose birth control) works like birth control, namely, by preventing ovulation.

One minor quibble: Belluck frames the story as part of the abortion debate, which is certainly how the anti-choice faction is approaching the issue. But even if emergency contraception did prevent implantation, EC would be no more an abortifacient than an IUD, a popular form of birth control that does prevent implantation. According to medicine, and common sense, abortion presupposes pregnancy, and pregnancy presupposes implantation. If you’re not pregnant, it’s not an abortion. But once again, anti-choicers are trying to redefine medical terminology for partisan ends.

At a time when science journalists are pressured to hedge, defer to authority, and give equal time to opposing sides regardless of their intellectual merit, Belluck bucked the trend, assessed the evidence, and stated her conclusion for the record.

Then Belluck went on to hold powerful institutions accountable by asking pointed questions. If the science says that the morning after pill is birth control, why do government-approved labels and health information resources raise the specter that the emergency contraception is an abortifacient? As you might expect, conservative pressure groups like the anti-choice Family Research Council are very interested in FDA labelling because these descriptors shape medical and policy conversations. Belluck reviewed the records on FDA approval for emergency contraception and found that the caveat about preventing implantation was grandfathered in from earlier labelling discussions about birth control pills. There is some question about whether daily birth control pills might discourage implantation by thinning the lining of the uterus. This conjecture remains unproven for regular birth control, but follow-up studies have shown the question to be a moot point for emergency contraception. One large dose of hormones doesn’t have time to alter the lining of the uterus the way daily birth control pills do.

The labels were written in a period of genuine uncertainty. Today, the scientific consensus is clear, but anti-choice groups are campaigning to keep the misleading labels intact. With any luck Belluck’s outstanding reporting will spur citizens to demand that scientific accuracy prevail over ideology.

[Photo credit: Grasshopperkm, Creative Commons.]

HBO joined forces with the Institute of Medicine, the CDC, the NIH, and Kaiser Permanente to create “The Weight of the Nation,” a four-part documentary about obesity in America. All four full-length films can be viewed online for free. The first episode, “Consequences,” examines the health impact of obesity in America. The second installment, “Choices,” attempts to explain why lasting weight loss is so difficult and what the average person can do to take control of his or her weight. “Children in Crisis,” documents the effects of childhood obesity. The final episode, “Challenges,” explores the economic, cultural, and political factors that make it so difficult, even for highly motivated people, to eat well and maintain a healthy weight in the U.S. today.

After watching the first two episodes, I’m impressed. Experts present the mainstream consensus on overweight and health in accessible language. They explain the connection between obesity and diabetes, the link between excess fat and cardiovascular disease, the distinctive health risks of abdominal adiposity, the role of a fatty liver in producing the metabolic abormalities associated with obesity, and how stress hormones predispose us to overeating and weight gain.

The documentary pulls no punches about the dangers of overweight, but it presents fat people as compelling and relatable subjects, not as objects of repulsion or pity. We don’t see any clicheed “headless fatties” shuffling along. The fat subjects are charismatic, funny, and self-aware. They come from all walks of life, some are call center employees, one is a judge. The message is clear: Their predicament is our predicament.