- 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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Year
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Leslie Neale
2004To complete and conduct outreach around her documentary film Juvies, about juveniles being prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to adult prisons in California. -
Margaret Love
2004To research state and federal procedures for the restoration of rights after criminal convictions. She will analyze how effective these policies are and will lay the groundwork for a national effort to eliminate legal barriers to prisoner re-entry... -
Mary Beth Pfeiffer
2004To investigate the growth of the mentally ill prison population in various states and to examine treatment options and opportunities for reform. -
Maurice Emsellem
2004To help educate and engage labor unions impacted by the spread of employment screening for criminal records after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks–a trend that increasingly denies jobs to formerly incarcerated people. -
Melissa Bradley
2004To integrate employment programs for formerly incarcerated people into mainstream economic development and to encourage investments from the business community to meet the employment needs of the over 600,000 people returning home from prison each year. -
Neelum Arya
2004To address through investigation, direct legal advocacy, and mobilizing youth and their families California's law that funnels young people into the adult criminal justice system (a result of Proposition 21). Arya will work to prevent youth... -
O. Grace Bankole
2004To organize parents to reduce the number of imprisoned children in Louisiana, to advocate for their incarcerated children, and to train a group of Parent Advocates that serve as statewide resources for other families involved in the justice system. -
Richard Leo and Tom Wells
2004To complete a study on a multiple-false-confession murder case in Virginia that led to the wrongful conviction of four innocent men. -
Richard Schmechel
2004To further educate defense attorneys in the District of Columbia to fully understand DNA technology with the goal of bringing reliable science into the courtroom to better protect the innocent. -
Roberta Franklin
2004To conduct a public education campaign and mobilize grassroots groups in four cities in Alabama around sentencing reform, improved conditions in corrections facilities, and alternatives to incarceration. -
Steve Liss
2004To document, through photography and audio recordings, the experiences of incarcerated children, their families, and correction facilities staff members. -
Brenda Kenneally
2001Brenda Kenneally will illustrate through writing and photography the problematic nature of incarceration for victimless drug and drug-related crimes. -
Emily Bolton
2001Emily Bolton will expose errors and identify practical, system-wide adjustments to minimize wrongful convictions. The project works to reframe the debate over the importance of constitutional protections and advocate reform of a system that places... -
Jan Goodwin
2001Jan Goodwin will write a series of articles exploring restorative justice as a viable framework for the criminal justice system. -
Jessy Fernandez
2001Jessy Fernandez will launch the Community Education Project which seeks to educate poor communities of color about the nation's over-reliance on punishment and incarceration, and to support their participation and leadership in creating and... -
Linda Evans
2001Linda Evans will increase civic participation of former prisoners, launch a public education campaign highlighting the social, political, and economic obstacles faced by former prisoners and engage in policy advocacy on behalf of them. -
Marlee Ford
2001Marlee Ford will create a replicable, community-based, prevention-focused, holistic defender model that is effective at both reducing juvenile incarceration and increasing public safety. -
Michelle Dillard
2001Michelle Dillard will raise public awareness, develop an advocacy module and framework for the implementation of therapeutic interventions for children with incarcerated parents. -
Peter Markowitz
2001Peter Markowitz will establish an immigration defense project at a local community defender which ensures that criminal representation is sensitive to collateral immigration consequences and can serve as a model for defender organizations nation-wide. -
Presita May
2001Presita May will recruit community-based lawyers to represent people of color in custody; strengthen residents' links to state and local government decision-makers, and to increase and enhance communication between community residents and the police. -
Sara Catania
2001Sara Catania will examine, through a series of articles, why the public and politicians in California continue to support prosecution of severely mentally ill people for capital crimes in spite of the 1986 Supreme Court ruling which holds that... -
Xochitl Bervera
2001Xochitl Bervera will create and implement a comprehensive and creative legal strategy to support and further grassroots organizing efforts to end all incarceration for profit.
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