Christina Voight

cvoight@sorosny.org



Justice Fund

Open Society Institute

400 West 59th Street

New York, NY 10019

fax: (212) 548-4666



The mission of the U.S. Justice Fund program focused on prison expansion and sentencing reform is to diminish the role of prisons in the U.S. criminal justice system and to pave the way for the creation of a larger system of public health and social supports. Race and class disparities in incarceration rates and in sentencing; prison expansion fueled by corporate interests; and financing schemes that keep decisions about prison expansion beyond the reach of voters not only represent a failure of public policy but a threat to democracy. By connecting the back-end pressure created by reversing prison expansion to advocacy for front-end remedies such as sentencing reform, the program seeks to expose the anti-democratic biases driving over-reliance on incarceration and to reduce the United States’ use of excessively punitive policies to respond to complex social, economic, and public health conditions, such as racial inequality, poverty, and addiction.