- 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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Ashley Rojas
2023Ashley Rojas will educate movement leaders and cultivate power between the movement for #PoliceFreeSchools and the broader culture of abolitionist organizing efforts to end harm and punishment. -
Avalon Betts-Gaston
2023Avalon Betts-Gaston and Lloyd Gaston will research the scope and impact of Illinois Worker Rights amendment on incarcerated workers -
Betty Washington
2023Betty Washington will create OASIS (Our Aging Seniors Incarcerated Society), a project focusing on advocating for the needs of justice-impacted seniors. -
Bridgette Simpson
2023Bridgette Simpson will educate the public and create The Protected Class Network, seeking to make justice-impacted people a protected class. -
Cheryl Fairbanks
2023Cheryl Fairbanks will educate native Indigenous people and strengthen concepts of justice through an Indigenous peacemaking lens. -
Dominique Branson
2023Dominique Branson will educate, document, and destabilize anti-Black ideologies that legitimize pretrial dangerousness predictions and harm Black communities. -
Jenani Srijeyanthan
2023Jenani Srijeyanthan will establish a counter-narrative to carceral child sexual abuse prevention through the amplification and technical resourcing of a nationwide prevention movement that does not prioritize policing, criminalization, or surveillance. -
Jordan Martinez-Mazurek
2023Jordan Martinez-Mazurek will educate the public and start local and regional dialogues around fighting the expansion of mass incarceration in the South and in Appalachia. -
Lloyd Gaston
2023Together, Lloyd Gaston and Avalon Betts-Gaston will research the scope and impact of Illinois Worker Rights amendment on incarcerated workers. -
Mary Baxter
2023Mary Baxter will, through an art piece entitled “Reimagining Dignity: A Love Letter to Ourselves,” educate the public to reimagine racially charged and gender-oppressive historical events. -
Matt Nadel
2023Together, Matt Nadel and Wendi Cooper will organize a statewide screening tour of the documentary film “CANS Can’t Stand” to educate the public about the archaic 1805 Crimes Against Nature by Solicitation statute and the harsh punishments it imposed. -
Omisade Burney-Scott
2023Omisade Burney-Scott will curate a multidisciplinary initiative and educate the public on reproductive justice, radical Black feminism, gender liberation, and pathways to normalizing menopause and aging for the marginalized Black population. -
Rachel Gilmer
2023Rachel Gilmer will educate the public and build a united front of survivors and health care providers with the goal of creating non-carceral solutions that address the root causes of violence in our communities. -
Talila Lewis
2023Talila Lewis will educate and create media and art that highlights how ableism informs and drives racism, anti-Blackness, capitalism, and other forms of oppression, violence, and inequity. -
Toshio Meronek
2023Toshio Meronek will educate the public and justice advocates about the expansion of involuntary medical conservatorship in Arkansas, with a focus on its potential human and financial consequences. -
Wendi Cooper
2023Together, Wendi Cooper and Matt Nadel will organize a statewide screening tour of the documentary film “CANS Can’t Stand” to educate the public about the archaic 1805 Crimes Against Nature by Solicitation statute and the harsh punishments it imposed. -
Amalia Greenberg Delgado
2009Greenberg Delgado will develop a public education program to counter myths about immigrants and crime, advocate for improved law-enforcement practices in immigrant communities, and work to preserve the rights of people affected by these abuses in... -
Anita Khandelwal
2009Through research and advocacy, Anita Khandelwal will challenge the Seattle Police Department's reliance on this dubious application of local trespass laws, and provide a model for challenging these practices nationally. -
Carrie Ann Shirota
2009Carrie Ann Shirota will work to mitigate and reduce the transfer of incarcerated Hawaiians to mainland prisons thousands of miles away. -
Catherine McKee
2009Catherine McKee will work with community organizations to improve access to federally assisted housing for formerly incarcerated people. McKee aims to develop a statewide reentry council in California focused on the issue of housing for those... -
Clemmie Greenlee
2009Greenlee will train current and former gang members in Nashville to advocate for criminal justice reform. She will engage youth who are working to transform their lives and change the system that contributed to their involvement in gangs and gang... -
Jessica Pupovac
2009Jessica Pupovac will explore the emerging crisis involving the skyrocketing number of incarcerated people over the age of 50. -
Katheryn Russell-Brown
2009Katheryn Russell-Brown will develop books on criminal justice issues that will help young people understand the court system, corrections, and the police. Her literature will encourage young people to think critically about perceptions of race,... -
Khalilah Brown-Dean
2009Khalilah Brown-Dean will test voter registration and mobilization strategies in five high-incarceration communities in Connecticut. Although Connecticut reformed its felony disenfranchisement laws in 2001, confusion about voter eligibility has... -
Kristin Traicoff
2009Kristin Traicoff will engage in advocacy to challenge Louisiana's lethal injection protocol.
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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.