In 2014, two 12-year-old girls lured a third into the woods and stabbed her repeatedly. The stabbings tell a tragic story about the deficiencies of the mental health and criminal justice systems in the U.S. – and the terrible things that often happen when they collide. Kathleen Hale tells this story in her new book.
Author Archives: Alisa Roth
Alisa Roth is the mental health correspondent for American Public Media Reports; she specializes in mental health, criminal justice and social policy issues.. A 2020-2021 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow, she is the author of Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness (Basic Books, updated edition, 2020). Previously, she was a staff reporter in the New York bureau of Marketplace, where she covered economic justice and the auto industry. Her reporting has frequently taken her overseas, including during the Arab Spring and the Iraqi and Syrian refugee crises. A Soros Justice Fellow and Fulbright scholar, she has received grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the International Reporting Project, and the Fund for Investigative Reporting. Her work has appeared in many outlets, including NPR, The World, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books. She lives in Twin Cities.
