Welcome to WitnessLA, the online source for daily coverage of criminal justice news with a special focus on how violence prevention, the juvenile justice & criminal justice systems, and school discipline affect the health and well being of LA’s communities.

Using the tools of investigative journalism, news reporting and commentary, WitnessLA-–and the soon to be launched, California Justice Report—provides an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit news source that holds public officials and agencies accountable, advances public knowledge, and aids in fostering solutions in the crucial arena of justice system issues, both on local and statewide levels.

The site is titled WitnessLA because a lot of what is talked about here is Los Angeles-based. But, as regular readers will note, what we report is not limited to LA.

Los Angeles is, however, the best of laboratories for our areas of focus since many of the nation’s hoariest social problems are writ larger in Los Angeles than anywhere else.

To put it another way: If we can solve these problems in Los Angeles, we can solve them anywhere. The same might be said of our fair state of California.

So, let’s get on with it.

We need your help. Tell us what’s going wrong in your community, your city, your state. What’s going right? Help us dig up the stories no one else is covering.

We’re all in this together.

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WITNESSLA HAS RECEIVED GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM:

The Institute for Justice and Journalism

The California Endowment

Spot.Us

The Fund for Investigative Journalism

NONPROFIT FISCAL SPONSORSHIP: WitnesssLA and The California Justice Report are proud to be projects of COMMUNITY PARTNERS