Shoshana Walter is a reporter for Reveal, covering criminal justice. She and reporter Amy Julia Harris exposed how courts across the country are sending defendants to rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry. Their work was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting. It also won the Knight Award for Public Service, a Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, and an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a finalist for the Selden Ring, IRE and Livingston Awards. It led to numerous government investigations, two criminal probes and five federal class-action lawsuits alleging slavery, labor violations and fraud.
Walter's investigation on America's armed security guard industry revealed how armed guard licenses have been handed out to people with histories of violence, even people barred by courts from owning guns. Walter and reporter Ryan Gabrielson won the 2015 Livingston Award for Young Journalists for national reporting based on the series, which prompted new laws and an overhaul of California’s regulatory system. For her 2016 investigation about the plight of "trimmigrants," marijuana workers in California's Emerald Triangle, Walter embedded herself in illegal mountain grows and farms. There, she encountered an epidemic of sex abuse and human trafficking in the industry – and a criminal justice system focused more on the illegal drugs. The story prompted legislation, a criminal investigation and grass-roots efforts by the community, including the founding of a worker hotline and safe house.
Walter began her career as a police reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida, and previously covered violent crime and the politics of policing in Oakland, California, for The Bay Citizen. Her narrative nonfiction as a local reporter garnered a national Sigma Delta Chi Award and a Gold Medal for Public Service from the Florida Society of News Editors. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she has been a Dart Center Ochberg fellow for journalism and trauma at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim fellow in criminal justice journalism. She is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.
Powered by the internet, the sex trade is reaching into all corners of the country. Reveal takes us into hidden places – real and virtual – where people are exploited for sex.
For decades, California’s Emerald Triangle has provided cover for the nation’s largest marijuana-growing industry. But its forests also hide secrets,
Armed security guards in California soon may be required to pass a mental health evaluation if they want to carry a gun on the job.
Defendants who can’t make bail are more likely to be convicted and less likely to receive favorable plea deals.
In the wake of mass shootings, businesses, school districts and towns often turn to armed guards. But armed security guards can introduce a new kind of danger.
The security company that employed Orlando, Florida, shooter Omar Mateen failed to heed warnings about at least two other employees who later went on to kill.
Authorities have identified Omar Mateen, 29, as the gunman who left 49 people dead at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
A Houston trafficking victim wants her trafficker to pay up. In a motion filed Dec. 15, the victim requested restitution from Hortencia “Tencha” Medels Arguello, who allegedly forced the victim and others to work without pay in Houston-area brothels, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle. A judge is expected to sentence Arguello in […]
Law enforcement agencies across the country are cracking down on pimps who target and sexually exploit minors – including some who are teenagers themselves.
About 90 security guard-related bills have introduced in state legislatures, but none of the bills that would have created substantial changes were enacted.
