Hannah Sassaman of Media Mobilizing Project is a 2017 Soros Justice Fellow

A Philly organizer who’s been a key part of a collective effort in ensuring our criminal justice system is held accountable was just awarded a fellowship that’s right up her alley.

Hannah Sassaman, policy director of the Media Mobilizing Project, will be one of 23 Soros Justice Fellows for 2017, a fellowship run by Open Society Foundations. This year’s class is made up of “attorneys, advocates, artists, writers and scholars” from around the U.S. who will be working on various projects focused on making progress when it comes to issues dealing with mass incarceration in the country.

Meet the 2017 Soros Justice Fellows, emerging leaders pushing for meaningful criminal justice reform. https://t.co/73YAMRCdMW

— Open Society Foundations (@OpenSociety) July 27, 2017

As the only fellow based in Philly, Sassaman’s work during her fellowship will focus on “working with communities impacted by mass incarceration to limit how ‘predictive algorithms‘ using race, and factors correlated with it, affect decisions about who stays locked up and who goes home,” according to the press announcement.

jurisdictions are piloting risk algorithms to guess who should lose their kids. must read on foster care and race: https://t.co/8xGvJMDVUu

— hannahsassaman (@hannahsassaman) July 21, 2017

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(If you want to learn more about what kind of work that will involve, our sister site Technical.ly Philly has more on the racist implications of such tech.)

“I am excited to continue to partner with our deep community across Philadelphia, and nationally with other social justice organizations through our many networks, including the Media Action Grassroots Network, to ensure that the people most impacted by algorithms in criminal justice decision-making have the resources they need to hold those algorithms and those implementing them accountable,” Sassaman said in this blog post.