- 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.
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Alisa Roth
2014Alisa Roth will develop a series of radio and print stories that explore how the criminal justice system has become the de facto mental healthcare system for so many people across the country. -
Andrea Ritchie
2014Andrea Ritchie will document and promote policy reforms and litigation strategies that address the specific ways in which discriminatory policing impacts women of color. -
Dolores Canales
2014Dolores Canales will expand the involvement of incarcerated peoples’ families in an effort to decrease mass incarceration and end the use of solitary confinement. -
Esi Mathis
2014Esi Mathis will train and mobilize a cadre of citizens directly impacted by the issue of young people serving long, adult sentences. -
Gina Clayton
2014Gina Clayton will establish an organization designed to help women with incarcerated loved ones become leaders in the struggle against mass incarceration. -
Kristen Bell
2014Kristen Bell will work to implement a groundbreaking new California law that allows for the early release of people serving long, adult sentences for crimes they committed as youth. -
Leslie Jill Patterson
2014Leslie Jill Patterson will promote the use of storytelling in capital murder plea negotiations, habeas proceedings, and clemency petitions to reduce executions in the state of Texas. -
Lois DeMott
2014Lois DeMott will launch a new project to provide critical information and support to families and friends of people incarcerated in Michigan. -
Mark Obbie
2014Mark Obbie will write a series of articles that explore sentencing policy from crime victims’ perspective and point out victim needs that are not met by the criminal justice system. -
Osagie Obasogie
2014Osagie Obasogie will expose the injustices associated with rarely scrutinized DNA databases. -
Rose Cahn
2014Rose Cahn will work with advocates across the country to stop the unjust deportation of immigrants with unconstitutional convictions. -
Seth Freed Wessler
2014Seth Wessler will report on the rapid growth of for-profit federal prisons used exclusively to hold noncitizens with criminal convictions. -
Shannah Kurland
2014Shannah Kurland will establish a project that documents police misconduct and provides legal support to people challenging abusive police practices in Providence, Rhode Island. -
Starcia Ague
2014Starcia Ague will launch a project to develop the leadership capacity of youth held in detention facilities in Washington State to prepare them for engaged and productive lives once released. -
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. -
Kerry Cook
2003Kerry Cook 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...
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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.