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 2023, the Federal Bureau of Prisons shut down a troubled unit at the prison in Illinois. The former warden is now the director of the federal center that does specialized training of prison staff.
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Supplemental Security Income provides the medical care that lets people work. But its rules are complex and out of date. -
People in one of the most important government programs for people with disabilities say its outdated rules can cause them harm—or even put their health and lives at risk
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A government program made to lift the poorest disabled and elderly people out of poverty is so out-of-date and complex that people often get kicked off. The agency that runs the program responds.
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Social Security's SSI program for people with disabilities requires couples to have no more than $3,000 in assets. -
Under Social Security's outdated SSI rules, couples say they can't marry - or they have to hide
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A little-known Social Security program was supposed to lift people out of poverty. Sometimes it traps them there instead. -
The government program called Supplemental Security Income has lots of outdated rules that harm the people it's supposed to help, like people with significant disabilities and their caregivers.
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Fifty-one years ago, Washington created a daring program to fight poverty. But instead of lifting people, it now traps them in poverty.
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The young North Carolina woman has refused to go to a nursing home in another state. While she wants to leave the hospital, she asks to live in her own home, close to family and her school.
