- Deadline
- Passed
Open Society-U.S.’s Soros Justice Fellowships fund outstanding individuals to undertake projects that advance reform, spur debate, and catalyze change on a range of issues facing the U.S. criminal legal system.
We are taking a moment to pause and analyze the future of our three U.S. based fellowship programs. This means we will not be issuing a call for proposals for 2025 fellows, as we would have done this fall.
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Year
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Brandon Brown
2024Brandon Brown and Catherine Besteman will educate, coordinate, and interrupt the flow of people into prisons through building a robust, reparative, healing alternative to incarceration in the wake of harm. -
Catherine Besteman
2024Catherine Besteman and Brandon Brown will educate, coordinate, and interrupt the flow of people into prisons through building a robust, reparative, healing alternative to incarceration in the wake of harm. -
Claudia Muñoz-Castellano
2024Claudia Muñoz-Castellano will educate and create a Texas statewide legal empowerment program to combat the alarming rise in criminalizing policies and practices that target immigrants. -
Deborah Small
2024Deborah Small will study the impact of local efforts to “reimagine public safety,” focusing on the effectiveness of the initiatives, enhancing trust between law enforcement and the community, and addressing systemic issues. -
Elizabeth Kennedy
2024Elizabeth Kennedy will research deportees to El Salvador and Honduras, focusing on youth, Indigenous and Garifuna communities, the LGBTQI+ population, and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. -
George Morton
2024George Morton will establish an initiative that elevates the vast expanse of Black narratives and fosters the transformation of Black people as artists and art subjects. -
Gina Jackson
2024Gina Jackson and Lea Wetzel will build a national model of peer support and best practices for missing and murdered Indigenous Womxn (MMIW/G). -
Kelly Davis
2024Kelly Davis will research the needs and experiences of pregnant people who have been incarcerated, to inform and advance a broader policy agenda based on gender-based violence, reproductive justice, and criminal justice reform. -
Lauren Faraino
2024Lauren Faraino will engage in legal and storytelling advocacy to investigate, and expose, and halt the unlawful practice of harvesting organs of people who die while incarcerated without family permission. -
Laverne Thompson
2024Laverne Thompson will craft a dynamic community archive of the groundbreaking efforts of Louisiana’s advocates and visionaries who paved the way for criminal justice reform in Louisiana. -
Lea Wetzel
2024Lea Wetzel and Gina Jacksin will build a national model of peer support and best practices for missing and murdered Indigenous Womxn (MMIW/G). -
Nia Lee
2024Lee will spearhead a national series for justice-impacted Black and Brown queer women, femmes, trans, and gender-expansive individuals to create a platform for dialogue, community building, and transformative justice spaces. -
Temi Mwale
2024Temi Mwale will examine how technology produces state violence and harm through the criminalization of Black communities, with a unique focus on the parallels between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. -
Tijanna Eaton
2024Tijanna Eaton will support authors who have served time in United States prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers, with wraparound coaching and services to develop books sharing their vital stories.
Some fellows are not listed due to confidentiality concerns.
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Year
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Ashley Rojas
2023Ashley Rojas will educate movement leaders and cultivate power between the movement for #PoliceFreeSchools and the broader culture of abolitionist organizing efforts to end harm and punishment. -
Avalon Betts-Gaston
2023Avalon Betts-Gaston and Lloyd Gaston will research the scope and impact of Illinois Worker Rights amendment on incarcerated workers -
Betty Washington
2023Betty Washington will create OASIS (Our Aging Seniors Incarcerated Society), a project focusing on advocating for the needs of justice-impacted seniors. -
Bridgette Simpson
2023Bridgette Simpson will educate the public and create The Protected Class Network, seeking to make justice-impacted people a protected class. -
Cheryl Fairbanks
2023Cheryl Fairbanks will educate native Indigenous people and strengthen concepts of justice through an Indigenous peacemaking lens. -
Dominique Branson
2023Dominique Branson will educate, document, and destabilize anti-Black ideologies that legitimize pretrial dangerousness predictions and harm Black communities. -
Jenani Srijeyanthan
2023Jenani Srijeyanthan will establish a counter-narrative to carceral child sexual abuse prevention through the amplification and technical resourcing of a nationwide prevention movement that does not prioritize policing, criminalization, or surveillance. -
Jordan Martinez-Mazurek
2023Jordan Martinez-Mazurek will educate the public and start local and regional dialogues around fighting the expansion of mass incarceration in the South and in Appalachia. -
Lloyd Gaston
2023Together, Lloyd Gaston and Avalon Betts-Gaston will research the scope and impact of Illinois Worker Rights amendment on incarcerated workers. -
Mary Baxter
2023Mary Baxter will, through an art piece entitled “Reimagining Dignity: A Love Letter to Ourselves,” educate the public to reimagine racially charged and gender-oppressive historical events. -
Matt Nadel
2023Together, Matt Nadel and Wendi Cooper will organize a statewide screening tour of the documentary film “CANS Can’t Stand” to educate the public about the archaic 1805 Crimes Against Nature by Solicitation statute and the harsh punishments it imposed. -
Omisade Burney-Scott
2023Omisade Burney-Scott will curate a multidisciplinary initiative and educate the public on reproductive justice, radical Black feminism, gender liberation, and pathways to normalizing menopause and aging for the marginalized Black population. -
Rachel Gilmer
2023Rachel Gilmer will educate the public and build a united front of survivors and health care providers with the goal of creating non-carceral solutions that address the root causes of violence in our communities. -
Talila Lewis
2023Talila Lewis will educate and create media and art that highlights how ableism informs and drives racism, anti-Blackness, capitalism, and other forms of oppression, violence, and inequity. -
Toshio Meronek
2023Toshio Meronek will educate the public and justice advocates about the expansion of involuntary medical conservatorship in Arkansas, with a focus on its potential human and financial consequences. -
Wendi Cooper
2023Together, Wendi Cooper and Matt Nadel will organize a statewide screening tour of the documentary film “CANS Can’t Stand” to educate the public about the archaic 1805 Crimes Against Nature by Solicitation statute and the harsh punishments it imposed. -
Arti Walker-Peddakotla
2022Arti Walker-Peddakotla will create tools through an abolitionist framework that work to defund the police and reinvest funds back into the community. -
Chris Watts
2022Chris Watts will create art that will spur debate around police surveillance and its harm on our society. -
Christina Hollenback
2022Christina Hollenback will build investment vehicles for capital investors to invest in community-controlled public safety and vital infrastructure and stop prison financing. -
Emile DeWeaver
2022Emile DeWeaver will write a book titled Ghost in the Prison Industrial Machine that examines the norms that undermine the movement to end racial oppression in the criminal legal system and offer counter narratives and strategies. -
Ifetayo Harvey
2022Ifetayo Harvey will build upon and create a social justice–oriented space for people of color interested in the healing potentials of psychedelics and ending the war on drugs. -
Irene Franco Rubio
2022Irene Franco Rubio and Katherine Owojori will explore the incarceration and criminalization of young people of color and our public school system through a #SchoolsNotPrisons podcast, YouTube series, and other media. -
Kate Uyeda
2022Kate Uyeda will work to ensure those detained in jails in Tennessee and elsewhere can exercise their right to vote. -
Katherine Owojori
2022Katherine Owojori and will Irene Franco Rubio explore the incarceration and criminalization of young people of color and our public school system through a #SchoolsNotPrisons podcast, YouTube series, and other media. -
Kerwin Pittman
2022Kerwin Pittman will develop a toolkit that will empower people directly impacted by incarceration to dismantle racism in North Carolina’s criminal justice system.