Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tracy Breton (standing), and Brown students Li Goldstein, Olivia George and Gaya Gupta (left to right) review files at the Rhode Island Judiciary Records Center.
My colleague Kevin Stacey wrote an excellent article on the work of professor Tracey Bretton and a class of journalism and computer science students who produced a series of stories exploring the opioid epidemic across Rhode Island.
Kevin writes: “Over the course of nearly two years, the team of 17 students dug deep into datasets acquired from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Providence Police Department, Rhode Island Judiciary and more than a dozen other sources. The work uncovered patterns of overdose deaths across Rhode Island, documented the flow of opioid medications into the state and revealed new details about how the criminal justice system deals with opioid use disorder. The data-driven pieces were combined with personal stories of real people impacted by the epidemic firsthand — a woman who made the journey from addiction to advocacy, or people who found themselves raising their grandchildren after losing their own children to addiction.”
