National security reporting is a strange thing. It means, among other things, that you spend a lot of time focused on developments other countries without really knowing those countries properly and you spend insufficient time engaging with the widespread important developments that happen in your own country. I’m not complaining. I’ve got Mary Kane to tell me about the housing crisis and Mike Lillis to tell me about Congress and Ezra Klein to tell me about health care and Moe Tkacik if she ever wrote anymore to tell me about finance and so on. I’m just saying there’s an element of disconnection that can occur, like when Captain America realized he was really Nomad.

One topic on which I’ve often felt unconscionably ignorant about is the social consequences of this country’s stunningly high incarceration rate. Luckily, one of my oldest friends is Colin Asher, an award-winning reporter who focuses on systemic analyses of crime, incarceration and poverty. You’ve seen him guestblog here every now and again. But he hasn’t set up a place on the internet to put his reporting and analysis.

That changes today with the launch of 14%, Colin’s new blog. I have no ability to be objective or detached about one of the most decent and diligent people I’ve ever been privileged to know, but I think you’ll consistently learn from Colin. And if I can add a note to the editors who read this blog: You should consider reaching out to him if you agree that the country is ill-served by journalism’s systemic neglect of the U.S.’s most vulnerable cohorts. Can we really tell the story of the economic collapse without them? Colin has been putting the work in for years. Check him out.