CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Mother Jones senior reporter Shane Bauer has won a $25,000 prize from Harvard University for an investigative report that exposed mismanagement in private prisons.
Bauer on Thursday was awarded the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He was honored for his report, "My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard," which detailed his employment at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana.
The Shorenstein Center says that within weeks of the report, the Department of Justice announced that it would end its use of private prisons and the Department of Homeland Security said it would consider doing the same.
Bauer was held hostage in Iran from 2009 to 2011 with his now-wife, Sarah Shourd, and friend, Josh Fattal.
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