Sophia Opferman Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative

After graduating Magna Cum Laude from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in May 2024, Sophia joined the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative full-time as the inaugural Membership Coordinator. During her undergraduate career, Sophia designed her own major, studying the intersections of Human Rights, Postcolonialism, and Law, with a focus on the tensions between law as a tool for mass injustice and the potential for law as an avenue for systemic change. Outside of the classroom, Sophia’s academic interests have translated into her work with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated communities, where she feels the tensions of the law are most evident. She was a member of the 2022 Cohort of the Gallatin Fellowship on Human Rights, where she worked as a community organizer with the Urban Justice Center’s Freedom Agenda Project, advocating for the decarceration of New York City and the closure of Riker’s Island. In 2023, she received the Gallatin Dean’s Award for Summer Research and an NYU Changemaker Fellowship, during which she worked as an intern with the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative, researching legal empowerment as a tangible pathway toward abolition. She is also a volunteer writer with the Remedy Project, where she assists incarcerated people in Federal Prisons in filing Administrative Remedies. Sophia plans to attend law school in hopes of working for the rights of justice-impacted communities, informed by the lessons and values of legal empowerment.