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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At Washington's Gallaudet University, the nation's only liberal arts school for the deaf, protests against the woman picked to lead the university, Jane Fernandes. Gallaudet officials expected the demonstrations to die down, but bloggers are keeping the issue alive.
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Dave Ward has turned his 1855 house into a model of "universal design." His so-called "Future Home" is made with technology and products that are easy to use for anybody, including quadriplegics, like Ward, or the elderly. -
I. King Jordan is a towering figure in the deaf community, because 18 years ago, he became the first deaf president of Gallaudet University. But ongoing student protests at the university are threatening Jordan's legacy.
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In her poems, Margaret Robison describes her recovery from stroke and the time she spent in a psychiatric hospital. But it's her son Augustin Burroughs' words in his memoir Running with Scissors that have defined her.
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For years there has been controversy over how many Vietnam veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder -- a psychiatric condition that can result from experiencing a terrifying danger. Using combat records for the first time, a landmark study in the journal Science comes up with a number lower than the onetime estimate of 30 percent but still significant: close to 20 percent.
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Bedrails are simple, metal devices that are supposed to keep frail people in bed and offer support. But if they're not assembled correctly, they can cause death by entrapment. The FDA has issued guidelines for the devices, and experts advise families to be on the lookout.
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Diagnoses of autism are on the rise, and one result has been the start of high-profile campaigns to raise money for research. Another trend has been far less noticed: an increase in self-advocacy groups that aren't pushing for a cure, but acceptance. -
At the Oatfield Estates assisted-living facility in Oregon, residents are tracked around the clock through a system of badges and sensors. It may sound creepy, but for residents with Alzheimer's or dementia, it allows them the freedom to roam while giving staff and loved ones the ability to check in at any time. -
Thousands of students and alumni from Gallaudet University insist a new appointee for president can't represent them because she grew up speaking instead of using sign language. The appointee, Jane Fernandes, who is deaf, met with students Sunday and asked them not to prejudge her.
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Students at the world's only university for the deaf, Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., are unhappy that Jane Fernandes was chosen as the school's new president. What lies behind the demonstrations?
