Post and Courier wins spring 2026 Collier Spotlight Quarterly Journalism Award
The spring Collier Spotlight, part of the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability administered by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, was awarded to The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina for its investigation of the treatment of the mentally ill in state prisons and jails.
The Spotlight Award is a quarterly certificate recognizing groundbreaking reporting on state government institutions.
The five-part series, “Caught in the Cycle,” revealed that more than 100 people with mental illness have died while incarcerated in South Carolina jails, and some were held pre-trial for months longer than the maximum sentence for their crimes.
To document the issue, the reporting team obtained and examined the psychiatric evaluations of more than 200 Charleston County defendants awaiting trial over the past 15 years.
To quote from the story, “The team’s review of these records opened an unexpected window into a dysfunctional, costly and, at times, inhumane system whose failings are normally kept hidden from the public.”
One Collier Spotlight juror said this project “represented an enormous undertaking by the journalists, who were able to take advantage of access to psychiatric evaluations of inmates that the courts mistakenly left available to the public. Inmates’ stories were in many cases heartbreaking, and the journalists wisely also showed how victims also are affected by this failure to deal with mental illness among prisoners.’’
The Post and Courier reporting team included:
- Glenn Smith is deputy managing editor for investigations and public service at The Post and Courier. He leads the Watchdog and Public Service team and helped write the news organization’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, “Till Death Do Us Part.”
- Jocelyn Grzeszczak is a reporter on The Post and Courier’s Watchdog and Public Service team. She previously wrote breaking news and features for Newsweek and The News-Press in Fort Myers.
- Alan Hovorka is a breaking news and courts reporter for The Post and Courier. Before joining the paper in 2022 as a features writer, he covered government and education for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and contributed to that state’s PolitiFact. His reporting there led to changes in hiring practices at a state university that protected people who engaged in sexual misconduct.
- Grace Beahm Alford assistant visuals editor for The Post and Courier, where she has been a photojournalist since 2001. She was part of the newspaper’s team, recognized as a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Feature Photography for coverage of the mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church. She was also the photographer for the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, “Till Death Do Us Part.”
- Gavin McIntyre is a staff photographer at The Post and Courier. He graduated from San Francisco State University. He produces images and videos for daily assignments and long-form projects. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, Bitter Southerner, The Wall Street Journal and ProPublica.
Works considered for this quarterly Spotlight certificate were published between March 1 and May 31, 2026.
Category: College News, Collier Prize News
Tagged: Collier Prize for State Government Accountability News Collier Spotlight Winners Rick Hirsch
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