Clementine Jacoby

Clementine Jacoby
Alma materStanford University
Employer(s)Google
Recidiviz

Clementine Jacoby is an American software engineer and criminal justice reform activist. She is a founder and executive director at Recidiviz. She was listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2021 and named as a TED fellow in 2022.

Early life and education

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Jacoby was a student at Stanford University, where she studied symbolic systems.[1] She spent one year of her studies in a circus in Brazil, where she taught acrobatics to gang members.[2] This experience prompted her to carefully evaluate the criminal justice system.[2] She worked at OPower, a platform which helped people make better decisions about their energy usage using behavioral economics.[1]

Career

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Jacoby joined Google where she worked on augmented mobile games.[2][3] She became increasingly concerned about the high numbers of people imprisoned in the United States.[4][5] In particular, she looked for low-cost solutions to mass incarceration.[6] Of the 2.5 million incarcerated Americans, hundreds of thousands pose no risk to public safety. One in four prison admissions occur not because someone committed a crime but because they violated rules whilst on supervision.[7] However, the data required to free them from prison is often distributed across several departments. Jacoby's work looks to make real-time data available for justice agencies and, ultimately, reduce recidivism.[1]

Jacoby is the Founder and executive director of Recidiviz,[2][8] a nonprofit platform that allows states to collect, clean, standardize and share fragmented data.[7][9] It collects data from prisons, probation and parole. Recidiviz makes use of an algorithm to recommend people for early release, so-called smart decarceration.[2] In the two years following its launch, Recidiviz was responsible for the release of over 40,000 inmates.[4]

As COVID-19 spread through prison populations,[10] North Dakota made use of Recidiviz to identify inmates who were eligible for release. In one month, prison populations in North Dakota were reduced by 25%.[11] Jacoby partnered with the Charles Koch Institute to expand Recidiviz to 15 states.[2]

Awards and honors

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "Recidiviz | DRK Foundation | Supporting passionate, high impact social enterprises". Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Recidiviz uses open-source data to create a fairer criminal-justice system". Charles Koch Institute. 2020-12-02. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  3. ^ Glasgow, Abigail. "This former Google manager wants to solve mass incarceration using big data". Business Insider. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  4. ^ a b c "2021 TIME100 Next: Clementine Jacoby". Time. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  5. ^ "About | Recidiviz | A Criminal Justice Data Platform". www.recidiviz.org. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  6. ^ "Clementine Jacoby combats recidivism through nonprofit Recidiviz". The Stanford Daily. 2021-01-28. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  7. ^ a b Institute, The Cicero (2020-04-10). "CICERO SPOTLIGHT | CLEMENTINE JACOBY | RECIDIVIZ". Cicero News. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  8. ^ "Our Team | Recidiviz | A Criminal Justice Data Platform". www.recidiviz.org. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  9. ^ "Data-Driven Criminal Justice Reform". Stand Together. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  10. ^ "COVID-19 Model for Incarceration | Recidiviz". www.recidiviz.org. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  11. ^ "Clementine Jacoby". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  12. ^ Peters, Adele (2020-08-04). "This former Google employee is using data to help prisoners get out—and stay out—of the justice system". Fast Company. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  13. ^ "Forbes 30 Under 30 2021: Social Impact". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  14. ^ "Meet the 2022 class of TED Fellows | TED Blog". Retrieved 2022-03-05.