Christian Parenti is an American investigative journalist and author. His books include: Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (2000), a survey of the rise of the prison industrial complex from the Nixon through Reagan eras and into the present; The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror (2003), a study of surveillance and control in modern society; and The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (2004), an account of the U.S. occupation in Iraq. Parenti has also reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, and Bolivia.