Soros Justice Fellowships

A Fighting Chance

Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed one of the largest pretrial detention facilities in the United States, the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP), and its inhabitants. Ursula Price will investigate Orleans Parish inmates’ horrific claims of neglect and abuse so that they may seek justice and aid in reshaping the Orleans Parish justice system. By conducting a focused investigation into the belated evacuation of Orleans Parish Prison and the subsequent events, Price seeks to identify, organize, and involve inmates and their family mem bers to leverage the evidence of their arduous journey into systemic change. With this evidence, the survivors of Orleans Parish Prison, aided by Price, will identify concrete ways to reform New Orleans’s police, prison, and court system.

Price is a senior mitigation specialist and fact investigator for A Fighting Chance, a nonprofit serving poor people facing the death penalty in the Gulf South. Price is one of Louisiana’s leaders in successful Atkins litigation, a means of preventing mentally retarded persons from being sentenced to death. She has spent the past four years conducting training on Atkins and other capital mitigation issues for both small local and large national groups.

Price began her advocacy career with Louisiana Capital Assistance Center (LCAC) before joining A Fighting Chance. Since her home city of New Orleans was flooded in Hurricane Katrina, she has been working with a coalition of lawyers and advocates to represent the interests of over 8,000 men and women who were in local area pretrial holding facilities before the hurricane and have gone months without due process, access to the outside world, or any word on when their overdue release date will come. Prior to her work with LCAC, Price served with the state of Mississippi’s Elections Regulation and Voter Rights Division, and volunteered with several organizations in her home town of Jackson, MS, including Catholic Charity’s Rape Crisis Hotline, Simms House, transitional housing and employment training for battered mothers and their children and Grace House, a hospice for HIV-positive men.

She is a graduate of Millsaps College of Jackson, MS, where she earned a degree in political science. She received an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago.

Houston, TX |  One Year |