Adam Mansky is a Senior Research Scholar in the Litmus program of the NYU Marron Institute. Mansky works with prosecutors and judges, local governments, and non-profits around the country to design and launch large-scale, meaningful and effective criminal justice reform. His Community First approach seeks to make community-based social services the primary, default response to offending, reserving the traditional outcomes of jail, prison, conviction, and fines/fees as the options of last resort.

Before striking out on his own in September 2020, Mansky led criminal justice programs and operations for nearly twenty years at the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), a national non-profit dedicated to creating a more fair, humane, and effective justice system. 

As CCI’s Director of Criminal Justice, Mansky designed, launched, and managed diversion programs across all five boroughs of New York City and in Newark, delivering community-based services to more than 20,000 justice system-involved people each year. His work ranged from early diversion programs and high-volume alternatives to bail, to alternatives to incarceration and conviction for misdemeanors, as well as felonies. A top-level, senior executive, he managed nearly half of CCI’s 500+ staff, and his portfolio represented roughly half of its budget. He has also held management responsibilities for CCI’s research and technology departments.

Mansky first joined CCI in 1997 to plan, launch, and, after its opening in 2000, lead the Red Hook Community Justice Center, CCI’s flagship. Dozens of jurisdictions around the country and world have replicated Red Hook’s model.

Since 2014, Mansky has served on the board, including three years as chair, of Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit working to improve NYC’s public-space and transportation policy. 

Before CCI, he practiced law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Weil, Gotshal & Manges. He received his B.A., with distinction, from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law.

Mansky has also lectured extensively across the US and around the world, taught at Fordham law school as an adjunct professor, and written about criminal justice reform, with articles published in The Hill and Crime Report.