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Josie Duffy Rice

Josie Duffy Rice is a journalist, writer, podcast host, and consultant whose work is primarily focused on prosecutors, prisons, and other criminal justice issues. Currently, she’s a co-host of What a Day, Crooked Media’s daily news podcast. She is also the creator and co-host of the podcast Justice in America. Until May 2021, she was President of The Appeal, a news publication that publishes original journalism about the criminal justice system. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Slate, among others. She has written for TV, including the upcoming FX show The Premise. Josie has also consulted for numerous television shows, movies, and other creative projects, and was a consulting producer for Campside Media’s Suspect, which recently hit #1 on the podcast charts.

Josie is currently a Type Media Fellow, and was previously a 2020 New America Fellow and a Civic Media Fellow at University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab.

‘We Can Make Him Disappear’: The Power of County Sheriffs

These days, former Sheriff Jim Pendergraph calls himself an “Old School Conservative,” but not so long ago he identified as a Democrat. This is back in early 2006, when Pendergraph was like most sheriffs — an enormously powerful guy who managed to get around unnoticed. He was 35 years into his law enforcement career and 12 years […]

Prosecutors Aren’t Just Enforcing the Law — They’re Making It

Just a few months ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo seemed sure that criminal justice reform was imminent. During his annual State of the State address in January, he called for a legislative package that would limit civil asset forfeiture, reform discovery, reduce trial delays, and most notably, significantly reduce the use of cash bail. […]

Do Conviction Integrity Units Work?

In May 1988 on the south side of Chicago, a video store caught fire in the middle of the night. The fire spread quickly, eventually burning down seven other nearby businesses and killing two people. The police determined it was arson, and quickly identified the owner of the video store as the mastermind of a four-person plot. […]