Caitlin Thompson is an investigative reporter specializing in data-driven accountability journalism. She often writes about mental health, the courts and the broader justice system, but she’s interested in all things related to wrongdoing, harm to vulnerable communities and a lack of oversight, accountability or action by people in power.

Caitlin’s reporting has exposed the state’s lackluster efforts to reduce drowning fatalities among residents, showed how Hawaiʻi’s gun violence protective orders are almost never used to remove firearms from people in a mental health crisis and revealed how people with mental illness are cycling through the state hospital without adequate treatment because of a well-intentioned law to keep them out of jail.

She uses computer programming to analyze large datasets to illuminate systemic flaws. Her analysis of thousands of court records showed that Honolulu’s crackdown on homelessness has trapped people in a never-ending loop of citations for things like sleeping on the sidewalk.

When she isn’t digging through data and public records, she loves nothing more than connecting with the people who make her journalism possible. She is a firm believer in the importance of trauma-informed reporting. She’s met sources in all sorts of places — from outside the probation office to a beach on the North Shore of Oʻahu to the line at a rental car shop — and she’s always up for a conversation anytime.

Prior to joining Civil Beat, she was on the investigations team at NPR in Washington, D.C. where her reporting on a real estate company offering sale-leaseback deals to cash-strapped homeowners sparked a U.S. Senate probe. Her reporting on juvenile justice provided the first national picture of how kids in most states don’t earn credit for time served, extending their time behind bars.

Caitlin is habitually over-caffeinated. When she’s not busy chatting with sources or filing public records requests, you can find her riding horses or working on her scuba certification.