Clementine Jacoby

Last updated
Clementine Jacoby
Alma mater Stanford 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.

Contents

Early life and education

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

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

Related Research Articles

Prison Fellowship is the world's largest Christian nonprofit organization for prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, and a leading advocate for justice reform.

Criminal psychology, also referred to as criminological psychology, is the study of the views, thoughts, intentions, actions and reactions of criminals and suspects. It is a subfield of criminology and applied psychology.

Incarceration in The United States is one of the primary means of punishment and rehabilitation, for the commission of crimes or other offenses. Nearly two million people are incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails across the country. The United States maintains a higher incarceration rate than most developed countries, with incarceration rate growing sharply since the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recidivism</span> Person repeating an undesirable behavior following punishment

Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior. It is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison reform</span> Reform of the prison system

Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison education</span> Educational activities inside prisons

Prison education is any educational activity that occurs inside prison. Courses can include basic literacy programs, secondary school equivalency programs, vocational education, and tertiary education. Other activities such as rehabilitation programs, physical education, and arts and crafts programs may also be considered a form of prison education. Programs are typically provided, managed, and funded by the prison system, though inmates may be required to pay for distance education programs. The history of and current practices in prison education vary greatly among countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rehabilitation (penology)</span> Process to make a person again a functional part of society

Rehabilitation is the process of re-educating and preparing those who have committed a crime, to re-enter society. The goal is to address all of the underlying root causes of crime in order to ensure inmates will be able to live a crime-free lifestyle once they are released from prison. It generally involves psychological approaches which target the cognitive distortions associated with specific kinds of crime committed by individual offenders, but it may also entail more general education like reading skills and career training. The goal is to re-integrate offenders back into society.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1991 to challenge mandatory sentencing laws and advocate for criminal justice reform. FAMM promotes sentencing policies that give judges the discretion to distinguish between defendants and sentence them according to their role in the offense, the seriousness of the offense, and their potential for rehabilitation. FAMM's members include prisoners and their families, attorneys, judges, criminal justice experts, and concerned citizens. In 2018, The Washington Post described FAMM as "one of the leading organizations that have pushed for criminal justice changes."

A prison nursery is a section of a prison that houses incarcerated mothers and their very young children. Prison nurseries are not common in correctional facilities in the United States, although prior to the 1950s many states had them and they are widespread throughout the rest of the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incapacitation (penology)</span> One of the functions of punishment

Incapacitation in the context of criminal sentencing philosophy is one of the functions of punishment. It involves capital punishment, sending an offender to prison, or possibly restricting their freedom in the community, to protect society and prevent that person from committing further crimes. Incarceration, as the primary mechanism for incapacitation, is also used as to try to deter future offending.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison</span> Institution in which people are legally physically confined

A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, lock-up, hoosegow or remand center, is a facility in which convicted criminals are confined against their will and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as punishment for various crimes. Prisons are most commonly used within a criminal justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those pleading or being found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment. In simplest terms, a prison can also be described as a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incarceration of women</span>

This article discusses the incarceration of women in correctional facilities. As of 2013, across the world, 625,000 women and children were being held in penal institutions, and the female prison population was increasing in all continents. The list of countries by incarceration rate includes a main table with a column for the historical and current percentage of prisoners who are female.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prisoner</span> Person who is deprived of liberty against their will

A prisoner is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Relationships for incarcerated individuals</span> Familial and romantic relations of individuals in prisons or jails

Relationships of incarcerated individuals are the familial and romantic relations of individuals in prisons or jails. Although the population of incarcerated men and women is considered quite high in many countries, there is relatively little research on the effects of incarceration on the inmates' social worlds. However, it has been demonstrated that inmate's relationships play a seminal role in their well-being both during and after incarceration, making such research important in improving their overall health, and lowering rates of recidivism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criminal justice reform in the United States</span> Reforms addressing structural issues in criminal justice systems of the United States

Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Hoke</span>

Catherine Hoke is the founder and former CEO of Defy Ventures, a United States-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

People in prison are more likely than the general United States population to have received a mental disorder diagnosis, and women in prison have higher rates of mental illness and mental health treatment than do men in prison. Furthermore, women in prisons are three times more likely than the general population to report poor physical and mental health. Women are the fastest growing demographic of the United States prison population. As of 2019, there are about 222,500 women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the United States. Women comprise roughly 8% of all inmates in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Step Act</span> United States federal statute

The First Step Act, formally known as the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act, is a bipartisan criminal justice bill passed by the 115th Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in December 2018. The Act enacted several changes in U.S. federal criminal law aimed at reforming federal prisons and sentencing laws in order to reduce recidivism, decreasing the federal inmate population, and maintaining public safety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decarceration in the United States</span> Overview article

Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. As of 2019, the US was home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners, until the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. possessed the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited. As a result of the push for decarceration in the wake of the pandemic, as of 2022, the incarceration rate in the United States declined to 505 per 100,000; meaning that the United States no longer has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Oluwafunke Adeoye, better known as Funke Adeoye, is a Nigerian lawyer and human rights defender.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Recidiviz | DRK Foundation | Supporting passionate, high impact social enterprises" . Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "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. 1 2 3 "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. 1 2 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.