May 13, 2008

Dana Priest on mentally ill immigrant detainees

Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein have a harrowing series in the Washington Post about the treatment of the mentally ill in immigrant detention centers -- lack of treatment might be a better way of putting it. I would put an excerpt here, but you should really check out the entire thing.

Dana Priest, of course, is the reporter who broke the story of the abysmal conditions at the Walter Reed army hospital, and also uncovered the CIA's use of "black sites" for suspected terrorists.
I really like the fact that the Post is letting Priest take the reportorial skills she used to ferret out ultra-classified secrets from the intelligence world, and deploy those skills on the world of immigration detention. These kinds of pieces are hard to do well, people find them depressing, and many reporters would consider this subject less prestigious than writing about the CIA. But this is an important story too, and putting your best reporters on it is one way to make it work.