Benjamin Hardy

Former Research Reporting Fellow, Local Reporting Network

Benjamin is an editor and reporter for the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network. He is a former research reporting fellow for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, and has worked as a reporter and editor for the Arkansas Times. He covered Arkansas’s first-in-the-nation Medicaid work requirement through a reporting fellowship from the Association of Health Care Journalists in 2018, and received the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s award for best investigative reporting in 2016. Benjamin holds a B.A. in International Relations from Hendrix College.

There’s Only One State Where Falling Behind on Rent Could Mean Jail Time. That Could Change.

Only Arkansas permits criminal consequences for nonpayment of rent — and it has enforced the law during the pandemic. Now, after ProPublica investigated the practice, some legislators want to revoke the statute.

A person reading an eviction notice while sitting on the steps of an uprooted home, in front of a courthouse, looming over a landscape of jail bars.

When Falling Behind on Rent Leads to Jail Time

Evictions in Arkansas can snowball from criminal charges to arrests to jail time because of a 119-year-old law that mostly impacts female, Black and low-income renters. Even prosecutors have called it unconstitutional.

CareOne Nursing Homes Said They Could Safely Take More COVID-19 Patients. But Death Rates Soared.

CareOne struck a deal to take COVID-19 patients from hospitals and made “COVID-capable” part of its branding. Now it has the highest rate of COVID-related deaths among large long-term care companies in New Jersey.

Early Data Shows Black People Are Being Disproportionally Arrested for Social Distancing Violations

Crowds of mostly white protesters have defied Ohio’s stay-at-home order without arrest, while in several of the state’s biggest jurisdictions, police departments have primarily arrested black people for violating the order.

Trump’s Get Out of Jail Free Card for a Convicted Scammer Is Full of Half-Truths and Omissions

Arkansas businessman Ted Suhl was given a rare commutation after serving less than half of a seven-year sentence for bribery and fraud. We annotated the official White House announcement to fill in some key missing details.

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