Justice
By its example and through its foreign policies, the U. S. plays a leadership role in addressing human rights abuses globally. However, its credibility and moral authority is undermined when human rights abuses continue its own back yard. The U. S. criminal justice system violates basic tenets of international human rights law and the U.S. Constitution by routinely imprisoning the mentally ill and the drug addicted without providing rehabilitative services, failing to provide adequate legal representation to low-income people, widely discriminating on the basis of race and income, dispensing one-size-fits-all mandatory prison sentences rather than individualized justice, and imposing the death penalty against juveniles and people who are overwhelmingly poor, minorities or suffering from deficits of education, mental disease or severe childhood abuse. The Fund seeks initiatives to reform public policy in these areas.*
Advancement Project - $70,000
General support for their efforts to restore the voting rights of ex-felons and for other progressive justice initiatives.
Center for Constitutional Rights - $50,000
For the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, where CCR recruits, coordinates and trains 250 volunteer attorneys from around the country to provide legal help to Guantanamo detainees and those captured anywhere else in the world in the name of the war on terror.
The Constitution Project - $80,000
For capacity building in the areas of communications and outreach, and management.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums - $50,000/year for up to 2 years
General support for their work putting a human face on the “victims” of mandatory sentencing, to personalize the absurdity and waste of inflexible sentencing laws for nonviolent offenders, in an effort to achieve reform of harsh mandatory sentencing laws at the federal and state levels.
Georgetown University/The Constitution Project - $57,000 over 6 months
In continued support of the Constitution Project’s Sentencing Initiative, to develop expert recommendations and legislative alternatives to mandatory sentencing.
Innocence Project - $50,000
General support for their work reforming the criminal justice system to protect innocent Americans from wrongful conviction and exonerating innocent people through the use of DNA testing.
National Legal Aid and Defender Association - $102,500
Continued support for the National Commission on the Right to Counsel’s work examining the problems with America’s system of legal services for low-income people facing criminal accusations, including proposing an agenda for reform.
Public Interest Litigation Clinic - $57,250
To set new standards and train lawyers in how to save clients’ lives in the sentencing phase of death penalty trials, capitalizing on recent landmark Supreme Court rulings that people facing the death penalty have a constitutional right to have the jury hear “mitigating” evidence that would suggest a life sentence, rather than death.
The Sentencing Project - $50,000
General Support for their work documenting the country’s discriminatory, costly, inhumane and ineffective sentencing policies, grown out of fear and intolerance, and also documenting the benefits of more rational and humane policies. They are focusing in particular on the excessive incarceration of non-violent drug offenders and the mentally ill.
Southern Center for Human Rights - $33,000
For their work protecting the constitutional rights of racial minorities, poor, and disadvantaged persons in the criminal justice system and to protect the human rights of people in prisons and jails.
* No unsolicited proposals
|
