Our Team
Shanna Rifkin
General Counsel
Shanna Rifkin is General Counsel of FAMM. Prior to this role, she served as Deputy General Counsel for nearly four years. She brings to this position her experience as both a litigator and public policy expert dedicated to reforming the criminal justice system. Shanna directs the Federal Compassionate Release Clearinghouse, oversees FAMM’s Supreme Court practice, and advocates for reform of federal sentencing and corrections law and policy before the United States Sentencing Commission, Congress, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Shanna is an expert in federal compassionate release and federal sentencing practices. She led FAMM’s work that expanded the federal compassionate release clearinghouse to include cases involving sexual abuse – work that resulted in the first-of-its kind project to help secure the release of survivors of staff sexual abuse. Her expertise has been relied on by various news outlets including NPR, The Marshall Project, the Los Angeles Times, Bolts magazine, Rolling Stone magazine, and more. She has also published with several legal journals and publications. Shanna was honored to receive the O’Malley pro bono award from Sidley Austin, LLP, a key volunteer partner with the federal clearinghouse. She is also a member of NACDL’s First Step Act Implementation Task Force.
Before joining FAMM, Shanna worked at Northwestern Law School’s Children and Family Justice Center, where she was fighting for clemency on behalf of incarcerated youth in Illinois. Before that Shanna was a litigation associate at Jenner & Block LLP. Her passion for sentencing law was shaped by her federal clerkships – first as a Law Clerk on the Western District of New York and then as a Law Clerk on the First Circuit Court of Appeals – where she was involved in nearly every aspect of federal criminal proceedings. She is a licensed attorney in New York and Illinois.
Shanna graduated magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, where she was both a notes editor and a published author on the Duke Law Review. Shanna received the Dean’s Award for excellence in Constitutional Law and the Scribes Award for legal writing. She graduated cum laude from Brandeis University where she studied health care policy and gender studies.
Connect with Shanna Rifkin:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanna-rifkin/
News Clips:
- San Francisco Chronicle: Opinion: Dublin prison’s ‘rape club’ survivors deserve to be released
- Bolts: “What’s More Extraordinary and Compelling?”
- Bloomberg: New Federal Prison Communication Policies Decried as Overkill
- Everyday Injustice Podcast Episode 241: Attorney Discusses Dublin Prison Debacle
- NPR: Federal prisons want inmates to pay victims, before making phone calls or buying shoes