The JEHT Foundation was established in April 2000. Its name stands for the core values that underlie the Foundation's mission: Justice, Equality, Human dignity and Tolerance. The Foundation's programs reflect these interests and values.
The JEHT Foundation’s Criminal Justice Program works to bring the latest research and best practices to bear to make the criminal justice system more effective to insure public safety and guarantee fairness to individuals. The Program supports parallel funding tracks for juvenile and adult justice, each of which reflects the interests described below.
The Program focuses on three phases in the criminal justice process for which appropriate interventions can make a difference:
- The period before final adjudication and disposition, when critical decisions about arrest, conviction, and sentencing are made;
- The period during which people are incarcerated, or under correctional supervision, when the decision whether to prepare people for successful re-entry into the community or simply containing and punishing them drives the agenda; and
- The period after people have left incarceration and need assistance to re-enter society and become productive members of their community.
In each of these phases, the policies and practices of the criminal justice system have a significant influence on whether outcomes for the public and for criminal justice involved individuals are likely to be positive or negative.
In the areas of arrest, conviction, and sentencing the Foundation focuses on:
- promoting policies and practices that appropriately divert persons from the criminal justice system, particularly in the cases of low-level drug offenders, people with mental illness, and youth;
- ensuring safeguards exist in the system to help reduce racial disparities and protect people from wrongful arrest, unwarranted conviction, and unfair and disproportionate sentencing including with respect to the death sentence; and
- developing criminal and sentencing codes that are understandable, consistent, and just.
The Foundation works to promote more positive prison environments that better meet the needs of those who are incarcerated and the communities to which they will return. Among the areas of specific interest are policies that support improved health and educational services for incarcerated people, humane living conditions, and better access for prisoners to their families.
In the area of prisoner reentry, the Foundation’s primary interests include support for comprehensive reentry planning and implementation at the state and local levels, and the removal of legal and social barriers to reentry.
Despite its widely admired commitments to the rule of law within its own borders, the United States has for most of its history been ambivalent about signing and abiding by treaties or other international instruments. Given the U.S. position, power and prestige in the world, this sense of "exceptionalism" has not been a constructive force for promoting international law as a governing principle either at home or abroad.
This program seeks to expand the constructive role the U.S. can play in promoting international justice, human rights and the rule of law both at home and abroad. Specifically, the Foundation considers proposals that promote:
- Better understanding by the American public and government officials of the importance of U.S. participation and leadership in efforts to ensure the rule of law and adherence to human rights and humanitarian standards and norms, both at home and abroad
- Strengthening the U.S. government's commitment to support, abide by, and promote domestic and international mechanisms of accountability, including:
- Using U.S. courts to try certain human rights violations committed abroad
- Using International law and mechanisms as a remedy for abuse occuring inside the U.S. ; and
- Investigating and prosecuting serious human rights violations and war crimes, incuding those attributed to U.S. nationals
This program promotes the integrity and fairness of democratic elections in the United States. The Foundation works with state and other government officials and entities, researchers, and non-partisan reformers to:
- Insure technical integrity of elections by professionalizing the administration of elections, insulating them from partisan political control, and supporting independent structures to oversee elections and related functions;
- Reduce administrative, statutory, and structural barriers to participation to enhance fair representation and transparent, competitive elections;
- Support reforms and internal controls in government to increase elected officials' responsiveness to their constituencies, free of conflicts of interest or influences inconsistent with democratic ideals.
Other Grantmaking Interests
Palliative Care
The Foundation sought, on an exploratory basis, to expand and strengthen the use of palliative care in a variety of health care and community settings in the U.S. The Foundation has closed this program and is not accepting new proposals. In 2008, the Foundation will make its final payments for outstanding commitments.
Click here to see grants made in this area by the Foundation.
Board Member Grants
From time to time the Foundation Board makes grants outside its normal program areas. These grants are solely at the discretion of the Board members and are by invitation only.
The Foundation recognizes that systemic and social change requires a long-term perspective and strategy and, at the end of the day, a measure of patience, luck and good timing.
With this in mind, the Foundation makes a combination of multi-year and one-time grant commitments for general operating support, project support, capacity building, and special needs and opportunities as they arise in its fields of interest. We support collaborations and coalition building when they serve to avoid duplication of effort and strengthen a specific goal. The Foundation does not set limits on the size of its grants or on the number of years it will consider supporting an organization. Each request will be considered based on its merit, relationship to the Foundation's goals, the need, the ability to advance the work of the field, and the Foundation's available resources.
The Foundation entertains proposals that fall within the program interests described above and that make use of one or more of the following approaches:
- Innovative, focused, results-oriented public education and advocacy that takes into account:
- The political economic and social environment in which the work is occurring and the readiness for change
- Existing public opinion or other research that informs the advocacy agenda
- The constituencies that need to be engaged to effectively promote the goals and how best to engage them
- Messaging and other communication strategies appropriate to the issues, audiences and goals that have been set
- Litigation and other legal strategies that bring to bear U.S. law and/or the application of human rights norms, standards and methods as applicable both before domestic courts and/or regional or international fora
- Development or use of practices based on evidence-based research that offer alternatives to current policies and practices and that have the potential to be taken to scale and inform policy decisions
- Conceptual or applied research that illuminates problems or issues and/or suggests promising solutions to policy issues
- Convenings that bring together key stakeholders - from government officials, to community leaders, to researchers, to advocates - for the express purpose of sharing information, developing joint strategies or implementing programs
- Planning and technical consulting services directly related to strategic efforts to change systems
- Evaluation directly related to informing change efforts and or promoting an environment for taking changes to scale
While the Foundation's style is flexible and open, we do expect that applicants carefully review the program interests before submitting an inquiry to ensure that their work corresponds to our goals. We further expect work plans to reflect a realistic view of the organization's institutional capacity to carry out the proposed work.