- 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.
Filter by:
Filter by
Year
-
Patrice Gaines
2009Patrice Gaines will write a series of articles exploring the impact of mass incarceration on African American communities. -
Renay Frankel
2009Renay Frankel will create an innovative partnership between criminal and civil legal services in Massachusetts to ensure more effective legal representation for low-income defendants. -
Sam Brooke
2009Sam Brooke will engage in advocacy and public education to curb arbitrary detentions and abuses at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facilities in the southeastern United States. -
Shannon Heffernan
2009Shannon Heffernan will go into prisons and communities in the Chicago area and record the sorrows and aspirations of incarcerated parents. -
Wyatt Feeler
2009Through advocacy and public education in several states, Wyatt Feeler seeks to bring a measure of fairness to the jury selection process and thereby reduce the number of death sentences. Specifically, Feeler will build upon the efforts of other... -
Alexandra Smith
2008Alexandra Smith will monitor New York State prisons compliance with new legislation diverting prisoners with serious psychiatric disabilities from solitary confinement. -
Brackette Williams
2008Brackette Williams will study individuals in Arizona who spent one or more years in solitary confinement and identify how it affects their re-entry into society, family, and community. -
Caroline Cincotta
2008Federal prisons bar noncitizens from participating in rehabilitative programs, subjecting them to longer sentences and harsher conditions; Cincotta will develop legal challenges to these discriminatory policies. -
Craig Gilmore
2008Craig Gilmore will create multimedia primers on the U.S. prison system to assist activists and organizations working to challenge mass incarceration. -
Harry Levine
2008Harry Levine will research the alarming trend toward race, gender, and age bias in marijuana possession arrests. -
Janet Moore
2008Janet Moore will work to reform Ohio's current system for providing legal counsel to low-income residents. -
Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton, and Erin Torneo
2008Thompson-Cannino, Cotton, and Torneo will co-write a book illuminating the problematic role of eyewitness testimony in wrongful conviction. -
Joshua Perry
2008In New Orleans, indigent defendants often face months of pretrial detention and endure harsh over-sentencing; Joshua Perry will coordinate special litigation efforts at the Orleans Public Defenders to alleviate these problems. -
Luissana Santibañez
2008Luissana Santibañez will build a Texas-based network of former detainees to elevate community awareness and build support for policies that protect the rights of detainees. -
Patricia Soung
2008Patricia Soung will use legal advocacy, community organizing, and research to work to abolish life without parole sentences for juveniles. -
Paul Hofer
2008Paul Hofer will research and write a series of articles and reports that assess the dramatic widening of racial disparities in sentencing and the reduction of judicial discretion under federal sentencing guidelines. -
Shadd Maruna
2008Shadd Maruna will complete a book exploring the future of self-improvement and rehabilitation as ideals in the U.S. criminal justice system and American society. -
Shantel Vachani
2008Shantel Vachani will create an innovative advocacy model to counteract the trends that push special-needs youth out of the public education system and into the juvenile corrections system. -
Sujatha Baliga
2008Sujatha Baliga will work to reduce California s over-reliance on mass incarceration by advocating community-based alternatives for youth, which address the underlying causes of youth crime and recidivism. -
Susan Phillips
2008Susan Phillips will complete a book examining how federal policies directed at combating drugs and gangs actually generate and sustain the conditions that perpetuate poverty, crime, and violence in communities of color. -
William Sothern
2008Sothern will complete two books that seek to inform the public debate surrounding capital punishment and juxtapose Sothern s own experience in the criminal justice system with those of his death row clients. -
Alison Little
2007A grant to address the effects of "zero-tolerance" educational policies and the drastic underfunding of public mental health and educational services in Texas, which fuel a "school-to-prison pipeline." -
JoAnn Mar
2007A grant to produce "The California Prison Crisis," a one-hour radio documentary that will explore California's overcrowded prisons. -
Johonna McCants
2007A grant to develop and promote solutions to violence that do not rely exclusively on the criminal justice system, and teach young people touched by violence to use visual and performing arts to build safety, peace, and justice. -
Jonathan Mahler
2007A grant to complete a book about Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay, and his defense lawyers, a Navy JAG and Georgetown University law professor, who sued the Bush Administration on Hamdan's behalf.
Subscribe to updates about new grant opportunities
By entering your email address and clicking “Submit,” you agree to receive updates from the Open Society Foundations about our work. To learn more about how we use and protect your personal data, please view our privacy policy.