Joseph Shapiro
Joseph Shapiro is a NPR News Investigations correspondent.
Shapiro's major investigative stories include his reports on the way rising court fines and fees create an unequal system of justice for the poor and the rise of "modern day debtors' prisons," the failure of colleges and universities to punish for on-campus sexual assaults, the epidemic of sexual assault of people with intellectual disabilities, the problems with solitary confinement, the inadequacy of civil rights laws designed to get the elderly and people with disabilities out of nursing homes, and the little-known profits involved in the production of medical products from donated human cadavers.
His "Child Cases" series, reported with PBS Frontline and ProPublica, found two dozen cases in the U.S. and Canada where parents and caregivers were charged with killing children, but the charges were later reversed or dropped. Since that series, a Texas man who was the focus of one story was released from prison. And in California, a woman who was the subject of another story had her sentence commuted.
Shapiro joined NPR in November 2001 and spent eight years covering health, aging, disability, and children's and family issues on the Science Desk. He reported on the health issues of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and helped start NPR's 2005 Impact of War series with reporting from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center. He covered stories from Hurricane Katrina to the debate over overhauling the nation's health care system.
Before coming to NPR, Shapiro spent 19 years at U.S. News & World Report, as a Senior Writer on social policy and served as the magazine's Rome bureau chief, White House correspondent, and congressional reporter.
Among honors for his investigative journalism, Shapiro has received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, George Foster Peabody Award, George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, Sigma Delta Chi, IRE, Dart, Ruderman, and Gracie awards, and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Award.
Shapiro is the author of the award-winning book NO PITY: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (Random House/Three Rivers Press), which is widely read in disability studies classes.
Shapiro studied long-term care and end-of-life issues as a participant in the yearlong 1997 Kaiser Media Fellowship in Health program. In 1990, he explored the changing world of people with disabilities as an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow.
Shapiro attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Carleton College. He's a native of Washington, DC, and lives there now with his family.
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People with intellectual disabilities are sexually assaulted at seven times the rate of people without disabilities. It's a crime that often goes unrecognized and unpunished.
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People with intellectual disabilities are the victims of sexual assault at a rate seven times higher than those without disabilities. But this epidemic receives little attention. -
At a notorious federal prison, inmates with mental illness are taken off their medications and given coloring books and crossword puzzles for therapy, according to a lawsuit filed this month. -
The abbreviated story of Martin Sostre, a revolutionary prisoner who challenged and changed the American prison system from his cell in solitary confinement. -
The United States Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa., is one of the toughest, most violent prisons in America, where inmate-on-inmate assaults are common — and sometimes deadly.
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At one of the toughest prisons in America, doubling up inmates in cells designed for solitary confinement can lead to violence, and for some who refuse a cellmate, handcuffs and chains. -
News of police shootings is all over our social media feeds and on TV. There seem to be a lot of them. But are there really more now, or were we just not paying attention? -
Imagine living in a cell smaller than a parking space or a king-size mattress. Now add a roommate. The result for some inmates forced to live together in solitary can be murder. -
Take a tour through New York and you'll see how the 25-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act is benefiting everyone.
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Says one public defender: "The frightening thing about solitary is that when it erodes your ability to interact with other human beings, in turn that trauma is inflicted on your family members."
