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 ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30 is a set of lists of people under 30 years old issued annually by ''Forbes'' magazine and some of its regional editions. The American lists recognize 600 business and industry figures, with 30 selected in twenty industries ...

'' in 2021 and named as a

TED fellow TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

in 2022.

Early life and education

Jacoby was a student at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

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

Career

Jacoby joined

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

where she worked on augmented mobile games. She became increasingly concerned about the high numbers of people imprisoned in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. In particular, she looked for low-cost solutions to

mass incarceration Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceratio ...

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

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

spread through prison populations,

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...

made use of Recidiviz to identify inmates who were eligible for release. In one month, prison populations in North Dakota were reduced by 25%. Jacoby partnered with the Charles Koch Institute to expand Recidiviz to 15 states.

Awards and honors

* 2020 Fast Company's Most Creative People * 2021 TIME100 NEXT * 2021 ''

'' * 2022 Appointed

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacoby, Clementine Living people Google employees Stanford University alumni TED Fellows Prison reformers American women computer scientists American computer scientists Year of birth missing (living people)