Clementine Jacoby

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]

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]

• 2020 Fast Company's Most Creative People[12]
• 2021 TIME100 NEXT[4]
• 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30[13]
• 2022 Appointed TED fellow[14]