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The Marshall Project: Diversity and Inclusion, 2021

01.06.2022

Our fifth annual diversity report. Read past years' reports: 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017.

The Marshall Project’s mission to expose abuses in the criminal justice system requires an equally strong commitment to diversity in our staff, board and management team, along with the audiences we reach and how we deliver our journalism to them. These audiences are wide-ranging: people who are incarcerated and their families; those who work in all levels of criminal justice, including judges, attorneys, police officers and correctional officers; people who want to learn more about how the system works in practice; and communities who have often felt misrepresented or unheard.

To reach them, we are investing more resources in audience engagement and outreach to understand what issues and what forms of storytelling best answer the news needs of many groups of readers. And we are beginning to assemble local news teams in communities that have been starved of reporting and data resources that would enable citizens to hold officials accountable.

Our journalism, anchored in rigorous fact-finding and intensive reporting, continued last year to highlight instances of structural racism and discrimination. Some examples included investigations exposing how police across the country disproportionately use force against Black teenagers, and how the rising number of life-without-parole sentences affect Black people in greater numbers than any other group.

Here’s a brief update on our progress:

Our Progress in 2021

The End-of-Year Numbers

The Marshall Project uses EEOC race/ethnicity and gender reporting categories, abbreviating some categories in the charts for space.

Race/Ethnicity: White (Not Hispanic or Latino); Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino); Hispanic or Latino; Native American or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino); Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino); and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino); Two or More Races.

Gender: Nonbinary, Female, Male

The demographic survey of freelance artists had a 93% response rate.

The Marshall Project has no employees who identify as Native American, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

The percentages in the charts have been rounded and may not add up to 100.

The Marshall Project
Race/Ethnicity
Gender
The Newsroom
Race/Ethnicity
Gender
Business
Race/Ethnicity
Gender
Editors
Race/Ethnicity
Gender
Freelance Artists
Race/Ethnicity
Gender
The Board
Race/Ethnicity
Gender