Erin Haney is a nationally recognized criminal justice reform advocate and attorney whose work has shaped bipartisan legislation in more than two dozen states and at the federal level. As Chief Policy Officer at REFORM Alliance, Haney oversees the organization’s policy framework and drives its legislative advocacy, collaborating with bipartisan coalitions, lawmakers, and directly impacted advocates to improve supervision systems and increase public safety outcomes nationwide.

Prior to REFORM, Haney served as National Policy Director and Senior Legal Counsel at #cut50 (now Dream.org), where she drafted and negotiated landmark state and federal reforms, including Dignity for Incarcerated Women laws and the federal First Step Act.

Haney spent more than a decade as a deputy public defender in San Francisco and a death penalty attorney in California. She has worked at all levels of the criminal justice system, representing indigent clients from pretrial through postconviction, first as an investigator and then as an attorney. As a death penalty attorney, Erin worked with clients and witnesses, often for years at a time, to develop social histories and reframe the narrative around her clients actions in an effort to persuade the courts to reassess the punishment of death.  Erin has also worked on civil rights suits on behalf of clients incarcerated in California’s prisons. 

Prior to attending law school, Erin was part of a founding group that developed a comprehensive program to assist women transitioning out of the local jail and back into society, as well as a pilot program that worked with battered women and the men convicted of perpetrating the abuse, in an effort to stop the cycle of violence.

Haney holds a JD from the University of California, Davis School of Law and a BA in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz.