Crime may not pay, but military imprisonment often does. That's what Dayton Daily News reporters Russell Carollo and Cheryl Reed discovered when they found that hundreds of soldiers and sailors convicted of serious crimes collect paychecks while in prison. Using at least five computer databases, Carollo and Reed revealed that in June 1994 alone, 680 military convicts collected salaries totaling more than $1 million of taxpayers' money. Meanwhile, victims, who had been raped, beaten or murdered, and their families received nothing, not even the restitution generally awarded by courts.
Carollo sniffed out the story after becoming intrigued with the military justice system. Then, serendipity and reporter's instinct intervened. While ordering a database of military prisoners, Carollo was asked if he wanted the field "with the pay in it."
As a result, Carollo and Reed spent five months investigating.
The military provided requested records slowly but with little resistance. The reporters obtained four databases from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, which pays military members. These were cross-referenced with databases from the Army and Air Force, which revealed omissions in the DFAS data.
They also used prisoner databases, court-martial files and other pay reports. With the help of researcher Veronica Szente, the reporting team combined the information into a database they built themselves, correcting faulty military data as they went along. "It was dirty data right from the start," Szente said. "I had to do a lot of manipulation." Extraneous characters, flashing symbols and incorrectly placed fields were among the problems.
"If (data) doesn't work in one program, try something else," Szente recommended. "If you can't upload it into your main database, try something that's a lower end Excel or Lotus; sometimes it's easier for them to pull it in."
The Dayton team analyzed its data using Paradox and FoxPro. But, Carollo and Reed did not stop there. They interviewed more than 100 inmates, their victims and families, prison officials, military legal experts, police officers and members of Congress.
The practice of paying convicted criminals in the military dated back more than 100 years, Carollo and Reed found, but many members of the military and Congress were unaware of it. After publishing six stories in a two-day series in December 1994, Congress and the military tackled the issue and pledged to reform the system.
Carollo offered several pieces of advice to reporters who may tackle similar projects:
Avoid flacks in favor of "Joe in the basement" - the data manager. "The flack doesn't know anything about computer databases," Carollo said. "Do your own homework and insist on talking to the computer person."
Meet the data manager in person. This was particularly valuable in Carollo's dealings with the military. "There are lots of acronyms, and they love jargon," Carollo said. "You are going to have to keep calling this person a lot. You've got to have a face-to-face contact."
Don't limit yourself. "Don't ever get on the phone and say these are the only fields I need," Carollo said. "This is an absolutely perfect example. There was this field that nobody in their right mind ever would have thought existed."
Always look for the unexpected. "The Army, we discovered, wasn't being on the up and up with us," Carollo said. "Their numbers did not include prisoners at Leavenworth." The reporters discovered the error by looking at the Leavenworth database and confronted the Army. "They said, 'Hey you're right; we left them out, ha, ha, ha.'"
Finally, Carollo said, once the desired data is identified, fire off the FOIAs fast. "The No. 1 advice is always file early," Carollo said. "File FOIAs kind of like an artillery barrage, long before you ever land on the beach."