Recidiviz turns the tangled data trapped inside prison, parole and probation systems into tools that help people go home sooner.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - NONPROFIT - EST. 2019
THE MARK. Recidiviz - a name that borrows from "recidivism," the exact outcome the company is built to shrink. A nonprofit that ships software.
Somewhere in a corrections office - Idaho, maybe Missouri, maybe Arizona - a case manager sits down to a screen that would have been impossible a few years ago. The numbers that used to live in a dozen incompatible databases now sit in one place. Who's eligible for release. Who's due for a check-in. Which returning citizen still needs housing lined up before Friday.
That quiet screen is the whole point of Recidiviz. Not a protest. Not a policy paper. A working tool. The San Francisco nonprofit built its reputation on an unglamorous premise: you cannot fix what you cannot see, and America's justice systems had made themselves nearly impossible to see. Data sat in silos that didn't talk to each other. Agencies couldn't answer basic questions about their own populations. Reform stalled at the same wall every time - "we don't have the data."
Recidiviz set out to remove that excuse. Its platform ingests information from fragmented corrections, parole and probation systems, links it, standardizes it, and hands it back as dashboards, alerts and analyses that staff actually use. The result is less a piece of software than a pair of glasses for an entire bureaucracy.
"We stitch together data from fragmented systems to give decision-makers the information they need to improve outcomes."
During COVID-19, North Dakota - Recidiviz's first partner state - reduced its prison population by roughly 25%. Not with a new law. With better information about who could safely go home.
Pull data from disconnected corrections, parole and probation systems.
Link and clean it into one consistent, open-source model.
Flag people eligible for release, reduced supervision or programs.
Staff review, keep the human in the loop, and make the call.
An open-source data platform that ingests, links and standardizes justice data and exposes it as usable dashboards and analyses for government agencies.
Combines state policy, case data and vetted community resources with large language models - and human oversight - to draft personalized reentry plans for treatment, housing and jobs.
Automatically identifies people eligible for early release or reduced supervision, so staff can act on policy in real time instead of by hand.
Public-facing dashboards that increase transparency into how state systems function - including outcome trends and racial disparities.
Recidiviz took a different path. Its Case Planning Assistant drafts a reentry plan - the case manager always makes the final call. The tool clears the desk so human judgment has room to happen.
Early results: about an hour saved per initial assessment, and roughly 20 minutes per reassessment. That's time redirected from paperwork back to people. In March 2026, Fast Company named Recidiviz one of its Most Innovative Companies for exactly this work.
A Stanford symbolic-systems grad who worked at Opower and Google - and once taught acrobatics to gang members in Brazil. A family member's time in the system made the mission personal. TIME100 Next, Forbes 30 Under 30, TED Fellow.
Previously a principal engineer at Opower. Helped turn an after-hours volunteer idea at Google into an open-source platform now used by corrections agencies across the political spectrum.
"The tools are built to keep the human in the loop - the case manager always makes the final call."
Recidiviz runs on philanthropic grants plus contracts with state agencies - not profit. Its reported backers read like a who's-who that rarely shares a table: the Ford Foundation, the Schusterman Family Foundation, MacKenzie Scott, DRK Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners, and individual supporters including Jim Breyer, Vinod Khosla, Bill Ackman and Ashton Kutcher.
The old nonprofit model raises money to run campaigns. The Recidiviz model raises money to build tools people use every day. Guess which one moves the numbers.
The case manager closes the laptop. A plan is set - housing, treatment, a check-in date - and one more person has a real shot at not coming back. No new statute passed today. Just information, finally legible, put in the hands of the person closest to the decision. That is the unshowy revolution Recidiviz is running: fix the plumbing, and the rest gets a lot cheaper.