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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In 1983, the high court ruled judges can't jail people because they're too poor to pay their fines and fees. But an NPR investigation found judges still use jail time as punishment for nonpayment. -
In the next installment of an NPR investigation, Joseph Shapiro goes to New Orleans to look at the ways poor people are charged for their public defender in court.
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Debtors' prisons were outlawed in the United States back before the Civil War. But an NPR state-by-state survey found that people still get sent to jail for unpaid court fines and fees.
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The White House told colleges and universities to take tougher actions to stop sexual assault. The Education Department released a list of schools under investigation for their handling of assaults.
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Data from the Department of Education show an increase in sexual assault reports, but college officials say new federal guidelines are helping more students come forward. -
In 2010, NPR's Joe Shapiro led an investigation into sexual assault on college campuses. As the White House releases its own report, Shapiro explains what's changed since 2010 — and what hasn't.
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The vast majority of people, including soldiers, with PTSD, depression or other mental illness are not violent. Psychiatrists doubt the latest shooting at Fort Hood could have been predicted. -
The former dental surgeon went to prison for a long-running scheme to obtain human bodies and then harvest their tissue for sale. He admitted guilt in 2008 and was sentenced to up to 58 years in prison. He died Sunday of cancer. -
NPR correspondent Joseph Shapiro and his 15-year-old daughter, Eva, were blown away by the quality of teen writing at last week's Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in New York.
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With the death of a possible suspect in one notorious case, activists are weighing the FBI's efforts to tackle cases from the 1950s and '60s. Some are calling for a congressional hearing to see whether the FBI has done enough investigating.
