Advocates Take on Failures of U.S. Criminal Justice System

NEW YORK, March 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Open Society Institute today named 18 outstanding scholars, lawyers, advocates, and journalists to be 2008's Soros Justice Fellows. In total they will receive more than $1,125,000 to support their creative and ground-breaking work to reform the American justice system.

The new fellows include a community organizer who fights to protect the rights of non-citizen detainees after seeing her own family torn apart by federal immigration policies; a lawyer who compares his own treatment in the criminal justice system with that of his clients on death row to spark debate about capital punishment; and a man and woman on the opposite sides of a wrongful rape conviction who now work together to raise awareness about the problems with eyewitness testimony.

"America's criminal justice system is broken, and too often perpetuates inequality rather than ensuring justice," said Ann Beeson, director of the Open Society Institute's U.S. Programs. "The Soros Justice Fellows are developing innovative solutions to expose the deep flaws in the current system and to restore justice for all."

The fellows, who are based in Arizona, California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Washington, DC, and Northern Ireland, will receive a 12 to 18 month stipend ranging from $45,000 to $79,500. With this support, they will work on the local, state, and national level to address critical issues such as death penalty reform, racism in the criminal justice system, prison growth and privatization, and the reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals into society.

Since 1997, the Open Society Institute has offered over $13 million in grants to more than 250 Soros Justice Fellows as part of a wider campaign to strengthen justice in the United States and around the world. OSI and the Soros foundations network have given away over $6 billion to build open democratic societies, including more than $796 million in the U.S. For more information on the Soros Justice Fellows, please visit www.soros.org.

    2008 Soros Justice Fellows

    Juvenile justice

    Sujatha Baliga; lawyer and advocate; Restorative Justice for Oakland
    Youth; Oakland, CA
    California has one of the country's highest rates of juvenile
    incarceration and recidivism. Baliga will work to reduce Oakland's over-
    reliance on mass incarceration by advocating community-based alternatives
    for youth, which address the underlying causes of youth crime and
    recidivism.

    Patricia Soung; lawyer and advocate; Children and Family Justice Center;
    Chicago, IL
    The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that allows youth under 18 to
    receive sentences of life without parole -- a sentence handed out to over
    2,000 juvenile offenders. Soung will use legal advocacy, community
    organizing, and research to work to abolish life without parole sentences
    for juveniles.

    Shantel Vachani; lawyer and advocate; Learning Rights Law Center;
    Los Angeles, CA
    An estimated 70 percent of the nearly 4,500 youths in Los Angeles County
    juvenile detention struggle with a learning disability. Vachani will
    create an innovative advocacy model to counteract the trends that "push"
    special needs youth out of the public education system and into the
    juvenile corrections system.


    Racial disparities and sentencing reform

    Caroline Cincotta; lawyer; American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants'
    Rights Project; San Francisco, CA
    Federal prisons bar non-citizens from participating in rehabilitative
    programs, subjecting them to longer sentences and harsher conditions.
    Cincotta will research, analyze, and develop legal challenges to these
    discriminatory policies.

    Paul Hofer; scholar; Washington, DC
    Over the last three decades the federal prison population has quintupled.
    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.

    Harry Levine; scholar and advocate; New York, NY
    In cities across the nation, African-Americans are arrested for marijuana
    possession at a rate three to ten times higher than whites, despite the
    fact that there is no similar gap in marijuana use. Levine will research
    the alarming trend toward race, gender, and age bias in marijuana
    possession arrests.


    Death penalty and wrongful conviction

    William Sothern; author, journalist, and lawyer; New Orleans, LA
    Sothern will complete two books, Put Away Childish Things and Until You
    Are Dead, that seek to inform the public debate surrounding capital
    punishment and juxtapose Sothern's own experience in the criminal justice
    system with those of his death row clients.

    Jennifer Thompson-Cannino; advocate and author; Winston-Salem, NC
    Ronald Cotton; advocate and author; Mebane, NC
    Erin Torneo; author; Los Angeles, CA
    More than 200 people in the U.S. have had their convictions overturned by
    DNA evidence, and three-quarters of these cases involved mistaken
    eyewitness testimony. Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson-Cannino (with
    Torneo) are the authors of Picking Cotton: A True Story, which illuminates
    this problem through their story: Cotton spent 11 years in prison after
    Thompson-Cannino mistakenly identified him as the man who had raped her.


    Immigrant detention and deportation

    Luissana Santibanez; community organizer; Grassroots Leadership;
    Austin, TX
    The massive expansion of federal detention centers for non-citizens has
    wrought havoc on family and community relationships. Santibanez, whose own
    family has been torn apart by recent crackdowns, will build a Texas-based
    network of former detainees to elevate community awareness and build
    support for policies that protect the rights of detainees.


    Indigent defense

    Janet Moore; lawyer; Ohio Justice & Policy Center; Cincinnati, OH
    Ohio's ineffective and inefficient public defender system contributes to a
    class disparity in incarceration rates. Moore will work to reform Ohio's
    current system for providing counsel to low-income residents.

    Joshua Perry; lawyer; Orleans Public Defenders; New Orleans, LA
    In New Orleans, indigent defendants often face months of pretrial
    detention and endure harsh over-sentencing. Perry will coordinate special
    litigation efforts at the Orleans Public Defender to alleviate these
    problems.


    Federal drug and gang policy

    Susan Phillips; scholar; Los Angeles, CA
    Phillips will complete Operation Fly Trap: Gangs, Drugs and the Law, a
    book examining how federal policies directed at combating drugs and gangs
    actually generate and sustain the conditions that perpetuate poverty,
    crime, and violence in communities of color.


    Solitary confinement

    Alexandra Smith; community organizer; Urban Justice Center-Mental Health
    Project; New York, NY
    New York State allows prisoners with serious psychiatric disabilities to
    be placed in solitary confinement, despite evidence that it often causes
    severe psychiatric deterioration. Smith will monitor New York State
    prisons' compliance with new legislation diverting these prisoners from
    solitary confinement.

    Brackette Williams; scholar and advocate; American Friends Service
    Committee; Tucson, AZ
    For three decades, states across the country have expanded their use of
    solitary confinement and supermax security units. Williams will study
    individuals in Arizona who spent one or more years in these conditions and
    identify how such confinement affects their re-entry into society, family,
    and community.


    Mass incarceration

    Craig Gilmore; community organizer and author; Los Angeles, CA
    The movement to reform U.S. prisons is growing rapidly, but the
    intricacies of the prison system remain little-understood. Gilmore will
    create multimedia primers on the U.S. prison system to assist activists
    and organizations working to challenge mass incarceration.


    Rethinking crime and punishment

    Shadd Maruna; scholar; Belfast, Northern Ireland
    The American public has increasingly rejected redemptive criminal justice
    policies in recent years. Maruna will complete Redemption RIP?, a book
    exploring the future of self-improvement and rehabilitation as ideals in
    the United States criminal justice system and American society.

The Open Society Institute, a private operating and grantmaking foundation, works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve its mission, OSI seeks to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. OSI works in over 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as in the United States.