- 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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Calvin Duncan
2013Calvin Duncan will seek to vindicate the post-conviction rights of people incarcerated in Louisiana prisons by increasing their access to court records and quality representation. -
Charity Tolliver
2013Charity Tolliver will form a grassroots campaign that challenges the policies and practices that push Illinois foster youth into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. -
Ian Mance
2013Ian Mance will use powerful and newly-available statistical evidence to expose and directly challenge the systemic practice of racial profiling in several North Carolina counties. -
Jackie Sumell
2013Jackie Sumell will launch a new media campaign that exposes the widespread use and abuse of solitary confinement and supports existing advocacy campaigns. -
Joshua Gravens
2013Joshua Gravens will educate Texas policymakers, law enforcement, the legal profession, and the general public about the harms associated with placing children on sex offense registries. -
Kylee Sunderlin
2013Kylee Sunderlin will create a network of expertly trained counsel to represent mothers facing termination of parental rights based on their enrollment in methadone maintenance treatment. -
Luis Trelles
2013Luis Trelles will produce a series of print, web-based, video, and audio pieces that describe the complications and contradictions surrounding the use of the federal death penalty in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. -
Marbre Stahly-Butts
2013Marbre Stahly-Butts will organize and support those affected by drug-related evictions in New York City to protect their rights and advocate for the end of such policies. -
Maureen Barden
2013Maureen Barden will develop and implement model policies and practices to help realize the Affordable Care Act’s potential for improving the physical and behavior health of Pennsylvanians coming home from prison each year. -
Mujahid Farid
2013Using research, mobilization and advocacy, Mujahid Farid will address the plight of older people in New York State prisons and promote the use of mechanisms that would lead to their release. -
Olga Tomchin
2013Olga Tomchin will challenge the inhumane treatment of indigent transgender people in immigration detention and improve their access to quality deportation defense representation. -
Tanya Erzen
2013Tanya Erzen will write a book describing how and why the U.S. has become a faith-based prison nation, and what this means for criminal justice policy and practice. -
Tyrone Werts
2013Through workshops, community meetings, and public education, Tyrone Werts will develop the leadership of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men in addressing the problem of crime and violence in their communities. -
Alexander Lee
2004To 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
2004Keilen 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
2004To protect indigent defense in Texas by monitoring the state's Fair Defense Act, which requires judges to meet certain minimum standards when appointing qualified counsel. Through outreach and public education, Marsh will work with county... -
Arwen Bird
2004Bird, 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 to work towards safer communities and a more humane, effective... -
Cheryl Graves
2004To 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
2004To 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 commissions; and to... -
David Dent
2004To write a book about his elementary school classmate who is serving a life sentence in a New York state prison. Dent will explore how underfunded mental health services in middle and low-income minority communities impact crime rates, the... -
David Feige
2004To write and record a series of commentaries 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
2004To write articles about the shifting balance of power among judges, juries, and prosecutors in sentencing defendants to make federal sentences more punitive. -
Ernest Drucker
2004To develop a public health model for understanding the deleterious impact and social consequences of mass incarceration, particularly on urban communities throughout the United States. -
Kerry Cook
2004Cook spent 22 years on death row in Texas for a crime he did not commit. In 1999, he was exonerated with DNA evidence. He will write a memoir detailing his experience as an innocent person wrongfully convicted and the critical need for national... -
Leslie Neale
2004To complete and conduct outreach around her documentary film Juvies, about juveniles being prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to adult prisons in California.
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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.