Chandra Thomas, JJIE.org’s award-winning state capital reporter, has been named a 2011 Soros Justice Fellow by the Open Society Foundations. She joins 17 other advocates, journalists, lawyers, grassroots organizers and filmmakers working on a wide array of criminal justice reform issues.
As part of the prestigious fellowship, Thomas will spend 12 months producing a series of print and multimedia pieces examining the ways that some Georgia schools divert at-risk children into the state’s 200-plus alternative schools, priming them for the criminal justice system.
The fellowship is sponsored by the Open Society Foundations, an organization whose mission is to curb mass incarceration, reduce harsh punishment and ensure a fair and equitable system of justice in the United States. George Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundations, has contributed more than $1 billion in the United States to fund the fellowships.