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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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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. -
Adrian LeBlanc
2000Adrian LeBlanc will write a series of articles on the intergenerational impact of prison, characterizing the troubling ways in which the children of incarcerated parents absorb the culture of prison. -
Alden Loury
2000Alden Loury will write a series of stories exploring how and why African Americans have suffered the greatest casualties in Chicago's "war on drugs" at every stage of the criminal justice system. -
Betsy Ginsberg
2000Betsy Ginsberg will challenge discrimination against mentally and physically disabled prisoners in New York, focusing on the biases which disabled prisoners face. -
Heba Nimr
2000Heba Nimr will assist INS-detained immigrants, their families, and communities in their efforts to change public opinion and the local law enforcement policies which have led to skyrocketing detention rates for non-citizens. -
John Biewen
2000John Biewen will produce "Beyond the Lock Up Society," a series of public radio documentaries exploring the stories of political and law enforcement leaders in the US (and Canada) who are rejecting America's unprecedented resort to incarceration... -
Lenore Anderson
2000Lenore Anderson will provide legal education and advocacy training to parents whose sons and daughters face incarceration, and to support them in their efforts to reform harsh incarceration policies. The project is expected to reduce the... -
Robin Busch
2000Robin Busch will expand a new college program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and raise public awareness of the importance of higher education for prisoners. The project will help prepare inmates for life outside of prison and will highlight... -
Sasha Abramsky
2000To write a series of articles that will explore how today's incarceration boom will affect tomorrow's society, looking at acculturation, and the economic and political problems faced by ex-inmates and the broader community. Specific issue areas... -
Steven Rubin
2000Steven Rubin will photograph asylum seekers, permanent residents, "lifers" and children incarcerated as a result of the 1996 Immigration Law, following the course of their detention through hearings and appeals to deportation and release, and...
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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.
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