David Jackson

Four reporters revealed the staggering prevalence of sexual violence in Chicago Public Schools. Top city, state and federal officials swept in to ensure student safety.

Juvenile state wards suffered assault and rape in government-funded residential treatment facilities, including youth "on the run, selling sex." This investigation immediately prompted government action including the resignation of Illinois' child welfare director and an overhaul of state child-protection policies.

Gary Marx and Jackson pierced official secrecy to expose America's faltering international fugitive extradition program, giving voice to forgotten murder and rape victims and sparking reforms in the U.S., Mexico and other countries. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate panel the articles exposed "simply unacceptable" flaws.

This series offered a prescient first warning of the patterns of predatory home lending that would spur the 2008 U.S. housing market collapse. Several real estate professionals, investors and attorneys were indicted for allegedly taking part in fraud schemes uncovered here. Illinois lawmakers passed the Mortgage Fraud Rescue Act. Then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Dick Durbin introduced a bill that would ratchet up enforcement, but their STOP FRAUD Act did not pass.

The reporting team meshed FBI data with internal government records and interviews to identify patterns of reckless shootings of citizens by District of Columbia police. The Justice Department quickly imposed new oversight, and police undertook a broad set of reforms. The number of citizens fatally shot by police declined 66 percent the following year.

To crack conspiracies of silence between Chicago police brass and organized crime figures, Jackson gathered confidential reports from eight federal and local law enforcement agencies then culled public records from Cook County to the Caribbean island of Curacao. The U.S. Treasury Department's Inspector General sought to uncover Jackson's sources and questioned at least four IRS agents before dropping the probe, Ray Gibson and Jackson reported. No Tribune source was compromised.

This investigation matched SEC filings with Justice Department and federal child welfare data to show government agencies were retreating from their historic role of caring for orphaned and delinquent children and parceling out youths to a rapidly growing sector of private detention and foster programs.

This investigation into the finances of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, reported with William Gaines, led to a HUD Inspector General investigation and fueled an FBI probe. The Nation lost its public housing security contracts and former Chicago Housing Authority chief Vince Lane was sent to federal prison for a bank fraud scheme revealed by the reporting.

Jackson and reporter Geoff Dougherty linked mine-specific U.S. Mine Safety & Health Administration datasets on worker injuries, inspections, fines and production characteristics; they calculated injury rates per ton of coal produced and man-hours worked, among other variables, and synced these results with ownership records. This account of corporate shortfalls was corroborated three months later by a 125-page MSHA investigative report.

Illinois was an outlier among states in its reliance on nursing homes to house younger adults with mental illness, including thousands of felons whose disabilities qualified them for Medicaid-funded nursing care. Illinois' Nursing Home Care Act was rewritten in response to this journalism.

After a Joliet toddler was found dead in her home, Jackson, Gary Marx and Duaa Eldeib exposed grievous government management failures in her case and showed she was only part of a pattern of dysfunction at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Then-DCFS Director George Sheldon resigned amid the cascade of articles, state lawmakers convened three legislative hearings, and Sheldon's successor cited the Tribune as she implemented new measures to reduce investigator caseloads, improve data collection on abuse and neglect investigations, and take back the most troubling cases from contracted nonprofits.

As large hog confinements exploded in number and size across rural Illinois, state officials promoted an industry that poisoned streams, trampled the rights of farm families and brushed aside worker reports of animal abuse, this project revealed. Several reform bills were introduced in response and Illinois farm families launched new efforts to protect their creeks, clean air and rural ways of life.

The rapes of children at Illinois' largest psychiatric hospital were revealed in thousands of pages of records from local police, state and federal agencies, and court filings. This article sparked reforms including a federal investigation that was ultimately resolved in July 2020 when Universal Health Services, Inc. paid the government a $122 Million civil settlement.

Rock Island, Ill., court records detailed the kickbacks that shaped the Iraq war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into the sand. Reported with Jason Grotto.

This groundbreaking investigation gained access to Chicago's internal school attendance database and revealed a devastating pattern of K-8 grade absences that disproportionately affected African-American youth and children with disabilities. A legislative task force and policy changes followed. Reported with Alex Richards and Gary Marx.

Convicted arsonist Louis Wolf had quietly become Chicago's most powerful slumlord -- until this article revealed Wolf's slippery and brutal tactics, and prompted the federal investigation that sent him to prison for tax fraud. His sprawling portfolio of Chicago properties was turned over to a court-appointed receiver and, one by one, whole city blocks started to flourish again.

A new combination of federal, state and local government records revealed a rising number of U.S. school food illness outbreaks. Shoe-leather and public records reporting named the corporate officials implicated in the largest U.S. food-borne outbreak then known, which sickened more than 1,200 students in at least seven states. The articles led to a joint U.S. Senate-House hearing and a confirming GAO report. Two federal safety bills were introduced, although neither subsequently passed. Incoming Chicago school chief Arne Duncan vowed to overhaul food contracts and serving practices.

Jackson found the trailblazing comic strip artist Jackie Ormes in her dark 33rd Street apartment. From 1937 to 1956, Ormes' artwork lit up Black and white newspapers nationwide. This effort to convey her genius, for Chicago's Reader, brought Ormes to the attention of art curators, anthologists and biographers. She died months later, but in sunlight.

A spot news investigation into the slaying of a 14-year-old boy.