CCJ Directory

Now a consultant, for over 11 years, Ann Jacobs was the Executive Director of the John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity at the City University of New York (CUNY). The Institute creates pathways to higher education and rewarding careers for people who have been involved in the criminal legal system, and advocates for access to housing, employment, education, healthcare, and other human rights too often denied people with criminal convictions.

For nearly two decades, Ms. Jacobs served as Executive Director of the Women’s Prison Association in New York, the nation’s oldest social service and advocacy organization for women involved in the criminal legal system. As a recognized advocate and reformer, Ms. Jacobs also founded the Women’s Justice Alliance, a consortium of over 100 service providers in New York State; she created the Institute on Women in Criminal Justice, a national policy center dedicated to improving the policies and practices affecting women in the criminal justice system; and the Women’s Advocacy Project, a program in public policy and civic involvement for formerly incarcerated women.

Previously, Jacobs was responsible for oversight of the city’s five public safety agencies for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Operations and served as the Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator from 1986 to 1990. Earlier in her career, Ms. Jacobs worked at the Pretrial Services Resource Center (now the Pretrial Justice Institute), the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, the Baltimore Pretrial Intervention project, the DC Department of Corrections, and a Baltimore halfway house run by formerly incarcerated people. Her experience encompasses work in both the juvenile and adult justice systems, at the local and national levels.

Ms. Jacobs earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park and attended the University of Baltimore Law School.