- 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.
Filter by
Year
-
Arti Walker-Peddakotla
2022Arti Walker-Peddakotla will create tools through an abolitionist framework that work to defund the police and reinvest funds back into the community. -
Chris Watts
2022Chris Watts will create art that will spur debate around police surveillance and its harm on our society. -
Christina Hollenback
2022Christina Hollenback will build investment vehicles for capital investors to invest in community-controlled public safety and vital infrastructure and stop prison financing. -
Emile DeWeaver
2022Emile DeWeaver will write a book titled Ghost in the Prison Industrial Machine that examines the norms that undermine the movement to end racial oppression in the criminal legal system and offer counter narratives and strategies. -
Ifetayo Harvey
2022Ifetayo Harvey will build upon and create a social justice–oriented space for people of color interested in the healing potentials of psychedelics and ending the war on drugs. -
Irene Franco Rubio
2022Irene Franco Rubio and Katherine Owojori will explore the incarceration and criminalization of young people of color and our public school system through a #SchoolsNotPrisons podcast, YouTube series, and other media. -
Kate Uyeda
2022Kate Uyeda will work to ensure those detained in jails in Tennessee and elsewhere can exercise their right to vote. -
Katherine Owojori
2022Katherine Owojori and will Irene Franco Rubio explore the incarceration and criminalization of young people of color and our public school system through a #SchoolsNotPrisons podcast, YouTube series, and other media. -
Kerwin Pittman
2022Kerwin Pittman will develop a toolkit that will empower people directly impacted by incarceration to dismantle racism in North Carolina’s criminal justice system. -
Latisha Vincent
2022Latisha Vincent will highlight the names and tell the stories of families most impacted by parole denials. -
Lisa Maria Rhodes
2022Lisa Maria Rhodes will scale ALAS, a training program for teachers to support students facing immigration court or criminal district court, to a nationwide organization that trains high school educators across the country. -
Luci Harrell
2022Luci Harrell will work to dismantle policing programs that exacerbate the homelessness crisis in Atlanta. -
Nicole Nguyen
2022Nicole Nguyen will bring taboo conversations into the public space and inform abolitionist organizing. -
Pauline Rogers
2022Pauline Rogers will train, educate, and organize incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families about the family reunification process in Mississippi and influence change to the child welfare system. -
Shakeer Rahman
2022Shakeer Rahman will work to dismantle policing programs that exacerbate the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. -
Tiera Howleit
2022Tiera Howleit will help elevate the voices of people of color whose lives have been impacted by the criminal justice system. -
Yasmine Arrington
2022Yasmine Arrington will produce a podcast with interviews and debates with Black and brown youth voices on issues and solutions to the criminal justice system, juvenile probation, reentry, and recidivism. -
Zachary Siegel
2022Zachary Siegel will write news stories and narrative audio stories that highlight public health and harm reduction approaches to overdose deaths. -
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...
Filter by
Year
-
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.