Jeremy Travis is a nationally recognized leader in the justice reform movement. He currently serves as Senior Fellow at the Institute for State and Local Governance at the City University of New York (CUNY ISLG), working with ISLG staff on research projects on pretrial detention, police accountability and prison reform.  From  2023 to 2025, Jeremy was a Senior Fellow at the Columbia Justice Lab, collaborating with the Lab’s director, Bruce Western, on a book manuscript and the Square One Project, a multi-year initiative they co-founded dedicated to “reimagining justice”.  

From 2017 to 2023, Jeremy was the Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice at Arnold Ventures, one of the nation’s largest funders of evidence-based justice reform strategies.  Under his leadership, the criminal justice team supported reform strategies on police accountability, community safety, unjust pretrial detention,  effective prosecution and public defense, community supervision, humane prisons, and barriers to reintegration for people with criminal records.    

Jeremy joined Arnold Ventures after serving for 13 years as President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. During this tenure, John Jay became a senior liberal arts college, raised graduation rates and secured record levels of financial support for John Jay students.  Jeremy worked with John Jay faculty to build research centers on community safety, prisoner reentry, the changing role of prosecutors, emergency preparedness, terrorism, cybercrime and criminal justice ethics.

From 2000 to 2004, Jeremy was a Senior Fellow with the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute where he launched a national research program on prisoner reentry.  From 1994-2000, he served as Senate-confirmed Director of the National Institute of Justice in the Clinton administration. During his tenure, NIJ quadrupled federal funding for criminal justice research.  Jeremy’s career includes government service as Deputy Commissioner, Legal Matters at the New York City Police Department, Special Advisor to the Mayor of New York, Chief Counsel to the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and law clerk for Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she sat on the Court of Appeals.  Prior to law school, Jeremy worked for six years at the Vera Institute of Justice. He began his career as a paralegal at the Legal Aid Society.  

Jeremy’s record of public service includes chairing the New York State Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice, which paved the way for the state’s historic initiative to close its youth prisons. He also chaired the National Research Council’s consensus panel on mass incarceration and co-edited (with Bruce Western and Steve Redburn) the panel’s landmark report, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences.  

Jeremy earned his JD and MPA from New York University and his BA from Yale College. He has authored or co-edited five books and dozens of articles, book chapters and opinion pieces. Jeremy has been elected to membership in the Council on Criminal Justice and the National Association of Public Administration.