Sari Horwitz

Washington, D.C.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering criminal justice issues for The Washington Post. Co-author of American Cartel.

Education: Bryn Mawr College, BA in political science; Oxford University, MA in politics, philosophy and economics

Sari Horwitz is an investigative reporter who covers criminal justice issues for The Washington Post. Horwitz has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times. In 2002, she shared the Pulitzer for investigative reporting for a series exposing the District of Columbia's role in the neglect and deaths of 229 children placed in protective care. The series prompted an overhaul of the child welfare system and a new wing of D.C. Superior Court for children and families. Horwitz also co-wrote an investigation of D.C. police shootings that revealed that D.C. police officers shot and killed more people
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Latest from Sari Horwitz

More than 900 Native American children died at U.S. boarding schools

A new Interior Department report reveals that 973 Native American children died at Indian boarding schools over a 150-year period of forced cultural assimilation.

July 30, 2024

Catholic bishops apologize for church’s role operating Indian boarding schools

In Friday vote, church leaders cite a “history of trauma” inflicted on Native Americans, including generations of children removed from their families to be forcibly assimilated.

June 14, 2024
Clarita Vargas, 64, one of the survivors of St. Mary’s Mission, an Indian boarding school, stands in the St. Mary’s church on the Colville Reservation on Feb. 20 in Omak, Wash.

Where did funding for Native American boarding schools come from? We took your questions.

Dana Hedgpeth and Sari Horwitz answered questions about their reporting on Tuesday during a live chat.

June 4, 2024

They took the children: U.S. created Indian boarding schools to destroy cultures and seize land

For 150 years, U.S. policy forced Native American children into boarding schools built to eradicate their culture and assimilate them into White society.

May 29, 2024
Sioux children before entering Hampton Institute. Native American children — some as young as 5 — were forcibly removed from their homes and sent hundreds of miles to Indian boarding schools.

‘In the name of God’: Native American children endured years of sexual abuse at boarding schools

Taken from their families and sent to remote boarding schools, Native American children often faced sexual abuse by priests, brothers or sisters who ran the facilities.

May 29, 2024

Five down in Apt. 307: Mass fentanyl deaths test a Colorado prosecutor

In a Denver suburb on the Sunday of Presidents' Day weekend, five people died simultaneously in what was then the nation’s largest known mass fentanyl poisoning.

December 15, 2022
District Attorney Brian Mason of Colorado’s 17th Judicial District is shown in Commerce City, Colo., in September.

American Cartel: Inside the battle to bring down the opioid industry

An adaptation from Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz’s book, “American Cartel,” reveals how lobbyists, lawmakers and K Street attorneys thwarted efforts to stop the deadly flow of pain pills.

July 7, 2022
Joe Rannazzisi, seen in 2017, was the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s division for policing the drug industry until his team was disbanded.

Judge rejects claim distributors fueled W.Va. community’s opioid crisis

Judge David A. Faber dismissed the argument made by Cabell County and its seat, Huntington, that three drug distributors bore responsibility for the consequences of an inundation of opioids.

July 4, 2022
A public service billboard along Interstate 64 near Charleston, W.Va., on July 20, 2017. The state consistently ranks first in the country for drug overdoses.

    As opioids flooded tribal lands across the U.S., overdose deaths skyrocketed

    In states like Oklahoma, with 38 Native American tribes, the deluge of pain pills rivaled hard-hit Appalachia.

    June 29, 2020
    Zach Williams and his wife, Laurie, help their twin daughters with homework after dinner in Ada, Okla. A Native American pharmacist for the Chickasaw Nation, he is in recovery after a long addiction to opioids.

    More than 100 billion pain pills saturated the nation over nine years

    New DEA data reveals that 24 billion additional pills than previously known to the public were distributed during the opioid epidemic.

    January 14, 2020
    From 2006 through 2014, more than 100 billion doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone were distributed nationwide, according to federal drug data.