CCJ Directory

Alex Busansky is the president and founder of Impact Justice, a national innovation and research center based in Oakland, CA and Washington, DC, which works to create a more humane and restorative system of justice in the United States.

Alex began his career as a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in 1987. For 12 years, he handled homicides, serious domestic violence and other family violence, and sex abuse cases. In 1998 Alex left New York City to work for the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC, where he became a trial attorney in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division. While at DOJ, he investigated and prosecuted cases across the nation involving excessive use of force by federal, state, and local law enforcement and corrections officers and racial and religious hate crimes.

In 2002 he served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold on the US Senate Judiciary Committee. In that role, he worked on a broad range of juvenile justice, criminal justice, and national security issues. Alex joined the Vera Institute of Justice as executive director of the Commission on Safety and Abuse for America’s Prisons two years later, and was the founding director of the Vera Washington, DC office. Alex also served as an adjunct professor at American University School of Law, co-teaching the Prosecution Seminar. He joined the National Council on Crime & Delinquency as president in 2010. During his tenure, Alex led the organization to become a leader working at the forefront of criminal justice reform. In 2011 he served as a member of the Los Angeles County Commission on Jail Violence.

At Impact Justice, Alex works to reduce the number of people involved in the justice system, improve conditions for those currently incarcerated, and support people successfully re-enter communities. He and his colleagues have developed, launched, and scaled numerous projects including the Restorative Justice Project, the PREA Resource Center, the Homecoming Project, the Research and Action Center, and the Center on Youth Registration Reform.

Alex earned his Juris Doctor at the Georgetown University Law Center and received a bachelor of arts in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and children.