JON CAMPBELL is an independent journalist focusing primarily on criminal justice and law enforcement policy. He was previously a staff writer at The Village Voice, where he specialized in longform investigative and narrative journalism, and his writing has appeared in The Appeal, The Daily Beast, Gothamist, Slate, Salon, L.A. Weekly, and other outlets.
Jon’s work has driven reforms in several areas. In 2014, he published the first in a long series of stories about the NYPD’s racially disproportionate use of a 60-year-old knife statute to jail and prosecute tens of thousands of people for the possession of common work tools. The legislature repealed the state’s “gravity knife” law in 2019. In 2016, his reporting on widespread abuses by New York’s private energy retailers, abetted by years of inaction by regulators, led to a wholesale overhaul of the industry that has helped drive similar reforms in other states. Earlier, Jon’s reporting on Los Angeles County’s then-unknown automatic license plate reader database helped prompt litigation that reached the California Supreme Court in 2017, and provided needed transparency of law enforcement surveillance practices.
Jon has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, and the California News Publishers Association. He lives in New York City.