Herald journalists win honors for Fight Club series on juvenile justice

Miami Herald journalists Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch have received two prestigious honors for the series “Fight Club: Dark Secrets of Florida Juvenile Justice.”

The John Jay College Center on Media, Crime and Justice announced Tuesday that Fight Club was the winner of the John Jay Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (series category). It is to be presented in February in New York.

Separately, Fight Club will receive the inaugural Lucy Morgan Award for Open Government Reporting. The award, from the First Amendment Foundation, is named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tampa Bay Times reporter known for using public records to expose corruption and reveal conflicts of interest.

Marbin Miller and Burch, the latter now with The New York Times, will be honored Tuesday during a luncheon at the Governors Club in Tallahassee.

Spurred by the beating death of foster child Elord Revolte in the Miami-Dade juvenile lockup in 2015, Fight Club took a comprehensive look at the state’s juvenile justice system.

Fight Club examined 10 years of juvenile justice records, documenting widespread brutality, sexual exploitation, medical neglect, administrative incompetence and a culture in which juvenile detainees are encouraged to dispense beatings to their peers, sometimes in exchange for vending machine snacks.

This story was originally published January 23, 2018 at 7:49 AM with the headline "Herald journalists win honors for Fight Club series on juvenile justice."