Our Reporting

July 21, 2021

Lax oversight, no-bid contracts and mysterious pricing: Inside the black box of Covid testing

More than a year into the pandemic, many details about Covid testing remain unclear to the public, including how much the tests will cost taxpayers and how effective they really are. Nowhere is that more evident than in Minnesota.

June 24, 2021

21 states still don’t require de-escalation training for police

Studies have shown that teaching officers to de-escalate confrontations can reduce violent encounters, but many states don’t mandate it.

June 23, 2021

The teen got a concussion. The school got a pass.

Up until 2019, the agency regulating Utah’s massive youth treatment industry rarely cited facilities for violating rules — even after cases of abuse. After a 2016 incident left a teenager with a concussion, state regulators listened to his mom’s complaint — and then did nothing about it.

May 21, 2021

Sequel confronts more abuse allegations amid concerns about its finances

The embattled youth treatment company will soon shutter its Northern Illinois Academy, the 13th closure since 2019, while creditors doubt it can repay its debts.

April 17, 2021

The Jail Tapes in the Dumpster

A murder conviction sent Myon Burrell to prison for life when he was a teenager. An investigative reporter dug into what seemed a hopeless case. What she found helped free him.

April 2, 2021

Former residents of troubled youth facility receive settlement money

The families of 17 kids settled their lawsuit against the owner of Mesabi Academy for $1.495 million, even as more treatment centers closed, forcing youth with mental health needs to wait months for care.

March 26, 2021

How Utah has let its many youth treatment centers off the hook

Utah has become a national center for youth treatment, and it goes easy on the industry. At one facility, teen girls were forced to sit in a horse trough as punishment, and state regulators chose not to punish the people who did it.

March 10, 2021

New data underscores Utah's lax oversight of youth treatment programs

Over the course of hundreds of inspections, regulators marked the programs as “compliant” 98 percent of the time. And in recent years, the state noted even fewer violations than before.

March 2, 2021

Mississippi to pay Curtis Flowers $500,000 for his decades behind bars

Judge orders state to give Flowers the maximum compensation for his wrongful conviction.

February 10, 2021

Embattled Sequel closes three more facilities

Following abuse reports, the company has now shuttered a dozen youth treatment centers in the past two years, including its flagship academy.

January 13, 2021

Thousands of public housing residents live near the most polluted places in the nation — and the government has done little to protect them

An investigation reveals that more than 9,000 federally subsidized housing properties sit within a mile of a Superfund site, and the government has failed to inform many residents of the potential threats they face. As a result, low-income renters are paying for government inaction with their health.

December 14, 2020

California hands Sequel a major setback

The state’s decision to no longer send children to out-of-state youth treatment facilities capped two difficult weeks for the embattled company.

December 9, 2020

Washington becomes latest state to ditch Sequel

State officials decided to no longer place foster children with the company following an APM Reports investigation and reports of abuse.

December 7, 2020

How private money helped save the election

After Congress failed to aid local election offices, a nonprofit provided critical funds — including $350 million from Mark Zuckerberg — that paid for staff, ballot-scanning machines, protective gear, and rental space that helped the presidential election run surprisingly smoothly.

October 30, 2020

The last days of Wisconsin's pandemic election

The critical swing state that had a disastrous April primary endures a divisive election with long lines at the polls and battles in the courts — all amid a raging coronavirus outbreak. Yet voter turnout has been surging.

October 19, 2020

Postal data shows hundreds of complaints about election mail problems

Election officials in cities across the country had ballots delayed or go missing in the mail.

October 16, 2020

Influential literacy expert Lucy Calkins is changing her views

In a major shift, the controversial figure in the fight over how to teach reading now says that beginning readers should focus on sounding out words, according to a document obtained by APM Reports.

October 14, 2020

S2 E20: Curtis Flowers

During three years investigating the Curtis Flowers case, we’d talked to nearly everyone involved: lawyers, witnesses, jurors, family members, investigators, politicians, and many, many people around town. But there was one person we hadn’t yet interviewed — Curtis Flowers. That is, until one day in early October, a few weeks after he’d been cleared of all charges. For the final episode of Season 2, we at long last talk to the man at the center of it all.

October 14, 2020

Will Doug Evans face accountability?

Prosecutors across the country rarely face consequences for misconduct.

September 28, 2020

More than 40 states have sent their most vulnerable kids to facilities run by a for-profit company named Sequel. Many of those kids were abused there.

A yearlong investigation led by APM Reports finds the company took in some of the most difficult-to-treat children while keeping costs low in pursuit of profit and expansion. The result was dozens of cases of physical violence, sexual assault and improper restraints. Despite repeated scandals, many states and counties continue to send kids to Sequel for one central reason: They have little choice.

How Sequel wins business from California