- 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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Amanda Alexander
2012Through direct legal services, client education, targeted litigation, and advocacy, Detroit native Amanda Alexander will work to minimize the ways an entire family suffers when a parent is incarcerated. -
Amanda Aronczyk
2012Aronczyk will produce a radio documentary and report on the financial barriers people face upon leaving prison and how this impacts families and communities. -
Ana Muniz
2012Working with a broad-based coalition in Los Angeles, scholar and activist Muniz will challenge the continued and growing use of gang injunctions. Individuals typically targeted by these policies are overwhelmingly black or Latino youth, raising... -
Angad Bhalla
2012Documentary filmmaker Bhalla will promote his film that examines the injustice of solitary confinement. The film explores the remarkable, creative journey and friendship between artist Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace, a man who has spent 40 years... -
Azadeh Zohrabi
2012Zohrabi will work to move California away from the use of long-term solitary confinement in state prisons through impact litigation, strategic communications, and public education. -
Carlos Garcia
2012Garcia, an activist and community organizer in Maricopa County, Arizona, will work to end the federal government’s collaboration with local law enforcement to detain and deport immigrants. -
Dana Wolfe
2012Through public education and advocacy, Wolfe will work to promote a reasonable and informed dialogue about sex offender management and sexual assault prevention in the state of New York. -
Francis Guzman
2012Guzman will challenge the practice of prosecuting and incarcerating children in California's adult criminal justice system and advocate for alternative sentencing and local treatment for youth charged with serious offenses. -
Hilda Chan
2012Chan will lead a grassroots campaign in San Diego County to end mandatory, unannounced, warrantless, and suspicionless home searches of people who have applied for welfare. -
James Ridgeway & Jean Casella
2012Journalists Ridgeway and Casella will document and report on the use and abuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and youth facilities, increasing public awareness of this pervasive but hidden practice. -
Jessica Karp
2012Karp will organize privacy, justice, and immigrants’ rights advocates against the federal government’s “Secure Communities” deportation program that is fueling record-level deportations and entangling local police in immigration enforcement. -
Joel Medina, Erin Siegal & Beth Caldwell
2012The team of Caldwell, Medina, and Siegal will produce a series of written and multimedia stories about the impact that mandatory, permanent deportations have on individuals, families, and communities. -
Jonah Engle
2012Engle, a journalist, will investigate the economic and institutional interests that profit from the War on Drugs. -
Lisa Riordan Seville & Hannah Rappleye
2012Journalists Riordan Seville and Rappleye will examine the nation's evolving probation systems, including the rising demand for supervision and efforts to cut criminal justice costs in local jurisdictions. -
Lynda Garcia
2012Garcia will challenge the selective enforcement of low-level offenses against communities of color through a campaign involving public education, advocacy, and litigation. -
Monique Morris
2012Morris will research how education related policies and practices lead to the overrepresentation of black girls in the juvenile justice system. -
Raphael Sperry
2012Architect and activist Sperry will engage professionals in the architecture and planning fields on the issue of mass incarceration, advocating for new priorities in public investment rather than increased prison and jail construction. -
Rebecca Richman Cohen
2012By examining the ongoing debate in Montana around medical marijuana, documentary filmmaker Richman Cohen’s film aims to ignite public discussion about how states can shift the country away from the failed War on Drugs. -
Tracy Huling
2012Huling will help policymakers, advocates and community leaders identify, document and implement effective ways to close state prisons in rural America. She will focus on best practices in the closure of prisons in rural areas, alternatives to... -
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...
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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.