Foundation Taps Visionaries to Reform U.S. Justice System

The Open Society Institute today awarded Soros Justice Fellowships to 17 outstanding individuals working to restore fairness to a deeply flawed criminal justice system.

The lawyers, advocates, scholars, and journalists will tackle issues from death penalty reform and the criminalization of immigrants to juvenile justice and the challenges of parenting in prison. The Soros Justice Fellows will receive a total of more than $1.3 million. "At a time of uncertainty and hardship for many in America, criminal justice looms as one of our most pressing challenges," said Ann Beeson, executive director of the Open Society Institute's U.S. Programs. "The new group of Soros Justice Fellows will bring fresh ideas to fix a failed system that breaks America's promise of fairness under the law."

Among the new fellows is a community organizer in Nashville whose son was murdered in street violence and who spent more than half her life entangled in the criminal justice system. She will train current and former gang members to become advocates for reform. Another fellow, a lawyer in Seattle, will challenge a common police practice that targets homeless and poor people and bans them from entire city neighborhoods. In Virginia, a parent whose son was incarcerated in the juvenile justice system is now a full-time advocate for reform in a state that houses youth in adult jails.

The Soros Justice Fellowships fund outstanding individuals to implement innovative projects that advance OSI efforts to reform the U.S. criminal justice system. OSI’s criminal justice reform strategy takes aim at two overarching ills in our system: the over-reliance on incarceration and harsh punishment, and the lack of equal justice—especially for people of color and the poor. Since its inception in 1997, the Soros Justice Fellowships have supported over 230 dynamic individuals working to address these issues at the local, state, and national levels.

The Soros Justice Fellowships fund individuals through two programs:

* Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowships, which support lawyers, advocates, grassroots organizers, activist academics, and others with important perspectives;
* Soros Justice Media Fellowships, which support print and radio journalists, filmmakers, authors, and others with distinctive voices.

All fellowship projects must seek to further OSI’s U.S. criminal justice reform priorities and should involve the intersection of these priorities with the particular needs of one or more of the following specific constituencies: communities of color; immigrants; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities; and women and children. Fellowship applications are especially encouraged from individuals directly affected by, or with significant direct personal experience with, the issues their projects seek to address.

For more information, please see the Soros Justice Fellowships guidelines. For program inquiries, please contact Christina Voight at cvoight@sorosny.org.

Source: Open Society Institute