- Deadline
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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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Andrea James
2015Andrea James will create a national network of formerly incarcerated women who will raise the level of dialogue about how incarceration impacts women, their children, and their communities. -
Anne Parsons
2015Anne Parsons will write a book that explores how the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals intersected with the rise of mass incarceration. -
Chanravy Proeung
2015Chanravy Proeung will mobilize Southeast Asian communities to combat racial profiling and police brutality. -
Dorothy Johnson-Speight
2015Dorothy Johnson-Speight will mobilize women who are impacted by homicide and who seek changes to our overly punitive responses to violence and crime. -
Eddy Zheng
2015Eddy Zheng will raise awareness about the impact of criminalization and deportation on the Asian and Pacific Islander community. -
Erica Meiners
2015Judith Levine and Erica Meiners will write a series of articles that aim to deepen understanding and spur conversation about sex laws, “sex offender” management, and the people they affect. -
Galen Baughman
2015Galen Baughman will work to end the indefinite detention of young people in Virginia who are branded by the state as irredeemably dangerous “sexually violent predators.” -
Judith Levine
2015Judith Levine and Erica Meiners will write a series of articles that aim to deepen understanding and spur conversation about sex laws, “sex offender” management, and the people they affect. -
Maia Szalavitz
2015Maia Szalavitz will write a book to spur a more humane and effective drug policy by showing that addiction is a learning disorder, as opposed to simply a brain disease or criminal choice. -
Maritza Perez
2015Maritza Perez will advocate for the provision of quality educational opportunities for Latinos who are currently or formerly incarcerated. -
Marlon Peterson
2015Marlon Peterson will advocate for bold measures to end gun violence and increase community safety in New York City through the creation of zones where no one will need to carry a gun—not even the police. -
Maya Foa
2015Maya Foa will identify and implement strategies designed to prevent the misuse of medicines in lethal injection executions in the United States. -
Noran Sanford
2015Noran Sanford will work to convert closed prisons in impoverished regions of rural North Carolina into sustainable farms and educational centers that serve youth, returning veterans, and others from the surrounding regions. -
nuri nusrat
2015Advocate nuri nusrat will develop the country’s first non-punitive, pre-charge restorative diversion model for children who sexually harm other children. -
Rachel Herzing
2015Rachel Herzing will launch a project to reduce the demand for police emergency responses in Oakland by increasing residents’ capacity to resolve conflict without having to call the police. -
Alexander Lee
2003Alexander Lee will alleviate the abuse of transgender and gender variant prisoners in California by providing alternative sentencing and mitigation services to those detained in the San Francisco Bay Area. -
Andrea Keilen
2003Andrea Keilen will research and expose prosecutorial misconduct in the Texas criminal justice system and produce a comprehensive evaluation of statistical and anecdotal evidence of deliberate attempts by prosecutors to circumvent the law. -
Andrea Marsh
2003Andrea Marsh will protect indigent defense in Texas by monitoring the state's Fair Defense Act (FDA), which requires judges to meet certain minimum standards when appointing qualified counsel. Through outreach and public education, Marsh will work... -
Arwen Bird
2003Arwen Bird, paralyzed in a car crash caused by a drunk driver, will mobilize crime survivors in Washington state and Nevada to break down the dichotomy between victims and offenders and work towards safer communities and a more humane, effective... -
Cheryl Graves
2003Cheryl Graves will work with community and juvenile court leaders to organize, train, educate, and advocate for juvenile justice reform in two high-crime urban areas in Chicago. -
Clive Stafford-Smith
2003Clive Stafford-Smith will organize a coalition to promote enforcement of constitutional and human rights in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (home of a U.S. military base and prison); to produce a best-practices manual for litigating the cases before military... -
David Dent
2003David Dent will write a book about his elementary school classmate who is serving a life sentence in a New York state prison. -
David Feige
2003David Feige will host a program on National Public Radio and to complete a book about indigent defense drawing on the voices of public defenders and low-income defendants. -
Emily Bazelon
2003Emily Bazelon will write articles about the shifting balance of power among judges, juries, and prosecutors in sentencing defendants to make federal sentences more punitive. -
Ernest Drucker
2003Ernest Drucker will develop a public health model for understanding the deleterious impact and social consequences of mass incarceration, particularly on urban communities throughout the United States.
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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.