WRAL-TV Reporter Amanda Lamb spoke at the Women Behind the Badge event in August.
WRAL-TV Reporter Amanda Lamb often covers stories featuring the North Carolina prison system in her work at the Big 5. Recently she received special recognition from a criminal justice organization for her work reporting in that field.
The North Carolina Correctional Association honored Lamb with its 2016 Outstanding Journalism Award. The award recognizes her for “having done the most in the past year to increase public knowledge about correction issues.”
The awards ceremony took place during the North Carolina Correctional Association Annual Training Conference on Friday, November 18. Unfortunately Lamb was out of town, so representatives delivered the award personally to her earlier this week.
Capcom spoke to Lamb about the honor and here’s what she had to say:
I’ve been covering the prison system in North Carolina as a crime reporter since I came to WRAL 22 years ago. Prisons are in fact microcosms of the outside world, all of the problems that exist in our communities exist in the prison system-theft, drugs, violence, sexual assault. It’s a daily challenge for corrections officers and those who manage our prisons to control crime within the prison walls while also maintaining inmates’ basic human rights.
The North Carolina Correctional Association honored WRAL-TV Reporter Amanda Lamb with their 2016 Outstanding Journalism Award.
What I’ve learned through my experiences with people who work in the prison system is that most of them possess a certain compassion and ability to relate to people who are incarcerated. Their goal is the inmates will be released and become productive citizens. If they are incarcerated for life, the goal is to make them productive inmates.
It’s easy for us to criticize how prisons are managed from the outside because we don’t understand the true nature of dealing with people who are incarcerated for life or people who actually have potential and need support preparation for their release. It’s a foreign world to most of us only glimpsed in movies and television shows.
I truly believe it’s one of the hardest jobs in the world to work with this population, and I admire the people who do it well.
I look forward to continuing to do stories with the prison system in North Carolina. My most recent story about the problem of cell phones in prison is an example of their transparency in recognizing a problem and asking the federal government for help.
Here’s a recent example of Lamb’s reporting about the N.C. prison system:
Thanks to WRAL-TV’s Amanda Lamb for these capcom photos.
