This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project – Jackson, a nonprofit news team covering Mississippi’s criminal justice systems. Sign up for their Jackson newsletter, and follow The Marshall Project on Instagram, Reddit and YouTube.
Sunshine Week begins March 15, 2026. The nationwide, nonpartisan initiative promotes the importance of open government and the public’s right to access public records.
Child welfare agencies often relied on flawed drug tests administered at childbirth to report tens of thousands of new parents to law enforcement.
In New York, guards who brutalized prisoners or covered it up were rarely fired.
And at least 50 people died while being treated behind bars by a for-profit health care company whose practices endangered those with mental illness.
Without public records, uncovering the facts behind these stories would never have happened. In some cases, reporters from The Marshall Project spent over a year getting the government to turn over key documents. They have also gone to great lengths to scrutinize records, which at times were missing pieces or outright inaccurate.
Reporters here and across the nation routinely request public records to illuminate systemic failings, abuse and corruption across all levels of government.
They do so under a federal law known as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or state open records laws. All 50 states have a version of FOIA, sometimes called Right to Know or Sunshine laws.
Sunshine Week kicks off March 15. It brings together groups in journalism, education, government and other organizations to highlight the importance of public records.
FOIA laws vary by jurisdiction, but generally anything written or recorded, including public employee salaries, government contracts and agency policies, are open public records. Even emails between officials can be released in some cases. Other documents, like records from an active criminal investigation, are often closed. Records can come in different formats, from hard copies to spreadsheets and videos. Media outlets, including The Marshall Project, have gone to court to force agencies to comply with open records laws. However, FOIA isn’t just for journalists. While rules vary across states, almost anyone can file a public records request.
Sheila Albers became an open records advocate after police in 2018 shot and killed her 17-year-old son, John, in Kansas. She discovered the officer quietly left the department after receiving a severance payout. When the government makes it difficult to obtain public records, Albers said, it is working to protect itself instead of the community.
Information revealed by records can raise awareness — and prompt change, from new laws to the launching of investigations.
A paper trail of invoices in Ohio showed a judge steered nearly $500,000 to a friend she had appointed to oversee complex divorce cases. The Marshall Project – Cleveland’s reporting on now-former Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze led to her resignation and criminal charges. She pleaded guilty in January to tampering with public records for creating a false court entry that sent the work to her longtime friend.
In Mississippi, public records illustrated how few prison homicides have been prosecuted. Not only did the state Department of Corrections announce it would reopen uncharged homicides going back to 2015 after the investigation was published by a consortium of journalists led by The Marshall Project – Jackson, but the reporting effort provided grieving family members with answers they had sought for years.
Last year, The Marshall Project, along with St. Louis Public Radio and APM Reports, won the Brechner Freedom of Information Award for a project on unsolved homicides. The team spent nearly three years pursuing records from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The work helped change policy and open more records to the public.
Dan Curry, the attorney for the Missouri Press Association’s hotline, said access to public records is “a constant, widespread issue.”
For instance, when reporters seek records from the Missouri Department of Corrections, a typical response is that it could take 90 working days, which amounts to over five months. A spokesperson for the agency did not respond to a request for comment on the long wait times.
A request going back nearly two years for information about a person in custody with the Arizona Department of Corrections remains listed as “in progress.” In a Feb. 4 update, the agency said that “the Public Records office is still in the process of reviewing records for responsiveness and for required redactions.”
A year ago, a reporter submitted a request to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and asked for it to be expedited, given the intensification of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. The department denied expediting the records and has not sent any of the requested material.
In the lead-up to Sunshine Week, The Marshall Project submitted over a dozen requests to corrections departments seeking their FOIA logs from 2025. Essentially, it was a request for past requests filed by others.
The responses varied widely. Vermont posts detailed information about the status of records requests online. Mississippi wanted $191. Oklahoma denied the request. Missouri said they had no records to send, meaning it likely does not maintain a log. Michigan sent 40 pages of documents that included the requester’s name and date, but contained nothing about the actual request. Texas responded with a 334-page PDF that included information about the request, but not the status. Washington said the records would be ready by April 1.
Dave Roland, director of litigation of the Freedom Center of Missouri, which represented a man in a 10-year fight for police records, said government transparency is fundamental to understanding how power is being used and money is being spent. It is also “an incredibly popular idea,” Roland said, that garners support across party lines.
But some states are moving in the other direction. Agencies in Ohio can now charge up to $75 per hour for preparing video records, such as body camera footage from law enforcement officers. Last year, Utah passed a law limiting the payment of attorney fees to a requester when they challenge a records denial in court. Legislators in Colorado are proposing extending response times.
Terry Mutchler, an attorney with 30 years of experience in open government laws, said the country is “in a dangerous moment when it comes to transparency.”
Part of that comes from the attitude at the top.
“Under this [Trump] administration, we see an extraordinary strain on what it means to be transparent,” Mutchler said.
She pointed to the Department of Government Efficiency, the agency launched under the Trump administration that made cuts to the federal workforce, and claimed it was not subject to FOIA.
In recent months, various organizations have sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement over FOIA requests on arrests and detention.
Mutchler said records should have guardrails to protect personal privacy, but when reporters or others face resistance to requesting open records, such as contracts, they should push back.
“People forget that citizens own these records,” she said. “That’s the real problem.”