In what was once the United States’ leading most violent large city, which is still one of the country’s most violent cities, a team of journalists at the Philadelphia Inquirer noticed that the public school system was experiencing an epidemic. Violence in the public school districts of Philadelphia was a problem experienced daily and many of the incidents went unreported.
The 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to the Philadelphia Inquirer for its series exploring the issue of children-to-children violence within the school district. Among the members of the team were reporters John Sullivan, Kristin Graham, Sue Snyder and editor Stan Wischnowski.
In a year-long investigation, the Inquirer interviewed hundreds of teachers, students and parents to get to the root of the problem. Too many violent incidents were occurring on a daily basis in Philadelphia
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This means that within the school district, “on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes,” according to the Inquirer.
However, this number does not include the thousands of more students who were either bullied, threatened or extorted. Thousands of incidents went unreported.
In addition to the many incidents that were unreported to either school officials or the police, the Inquirer found that many teachers had the inability to intervene when a violent act was occurring.
The mass amount of school violence that the Philadelphia public schools was experiencing was described as a “public health problem.”
It was assumed that one reason for the mass amount of violence in public schools was due to the fact that dozens of the schools were located in impoverished neighborhoods. Many of the neighborhoods were found to be plagued by drug abuse, parental neglect and general crime, in addition to