- 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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Year
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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. -
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.
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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.