Shane Bauer

Shane Bauer

Shane Bauer is a senior reporter at Mother Jones magazine. In 2015, Shane took a job as a prison guard in Louisiana to investigate corporate-run prisons, the subject of the award-wining piece, “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard.” In 2016, he went undercover again to investigate America’s resurgent right-wing paramilitary movement. Earlier in his career, Shane focused on the Middle East, reporting from locations such as Iraq, Sudan, Chad, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Israel/Palestine. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Salon, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. His journalism has garnered a number of national awards, including a National Magazine Award for Best Reporting, a Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, a Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism, an Izzy Stone Award, two John Jay Awards for Criminal Justice Reporting, and many others. He is also a two-time winner of the John Jay Award for Criminal Justice Reporting. From 2009-2011 Shane was held hostage in Iran with his now-wife Sarah Shourd and friend Josh Fattal. Together they co-authored a memoir, A Sliver of Light, published by Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt. He is currently writing a book about for-profit prisons. Last updated July 2017

Investigation

No Way Out

Some human rights groups now call solitary confinement “torture.” Yet the State of California throws thousands of men into solitary for little more than the books they read and the company they keep.