Focused on Criminal Justice
Focused on Criminal Justice
By Jeffrey Raymond
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Through a Soros Justice Fellowship, Ronald Chatters III is working this year and
next to advocate for prison and criminal justice reform in Los Angeles.
Stheir lives in sports or entertainment. Ronald
ome kids grow up thinking about spending
Chatters III grew up thinking about prisons and
criminal justice.
His father was one of several people close to him
who served time during Chatters’ childhood in
Southern California. He saw that prisons were focused
more on punishment than rehabilitation and began
asking himself, “What are we doing as a society to
help prisoners return to the community so they don’t
go back to prison?”
Backed by a Soros Justice Fellowship, Chatters, 28,
is taking two years to help the American Civil Liberties
Union of Southern California address that question
before returning to the School of Law for his third
and final year in 2012-13. Prison reform and broader
criminal justice reform have been unpopular crusades
in recent decades, but Chatters thinks the time is right
to press the issue.
“With federal and state governments running
IAN deficits, people are thinking about how governments
R
FO are spending their money,” Chatters says. “You
I
L
CA can inspire people to think about things in a
N
H different way.”
R
E
T
SUO Chatters landed at the School of Law when he was
F
UO named a Leadership Scholar, an honor that provides
L
CA tuition assistance to selected students. That award
F
O
Y helped persuade him to attend the University of
S
E
TRU Maryland over other institutions. Plus, with the
O
H School of Law’s tradition of public service, he’s been
C
P
RG able to balance classes as well as work in local clinics
A
O
THO that address criminal justice.
P Before arriving in Baltimore, he earned a Masters in
Public Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and
a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University. Both
schools gave Chatters full tuition scholarships. “I
wouldn’t be where I am if people didn’t believe in me
and the work I’ve done,” he says.
The Soros Justice Fellowship will allow him to
advocate for Los Angeles County inmates with
disabilities who must reapply to have their Social Security
benefits restored after they are released. California’s
Board of Corrections has determined that even a short
gap between release and the resumption of benefits
strains former inmates’ ability to adjust to society and
contributes to recidivism. Chatters will work to bring
agencies and communities together to address this
challenging issue. He also will organize communities
most impacted by incarceration in Greater Los Angeles
by training them in advocacy strategies to bring about
policy changes. “It’s time that everyone has a seat at
the policy-making table,” Chatters says.
Upon earning his JD, he would like to become
a consultant on prison and criminal justice reform.
“I see myself going where the causes are,” he says,
“where the need is.”
Reprinted with permission of Maryland magazine,
the annual research and scholarship publication of
the University of Maryland, Baltimore. It can be
viewed online at www.oea.umaryland.edu/
communications/magazine/ (...truncated)