Clinton Lacey is the president and CEO of the Credible Messenger Mentoring Movement (CM3), a newly launched organization focusing on supporting Credible Messenger Mentors - community-rooted natural leaders who have successfully navigated their own prior involvement in the justice system, who share similar life experiences with current justice-involved young people, and are poised to have transformative impact on an individual, family, community and systemic level - and maximizing their impact around the nation.
Prior to the recent launch of CM3, Lacey served as Director of the District of Columbia Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), Washington DC’s cabinet-level juvenile justice agency, where he was appointed by Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser in 2015.
Before joining DYRS, Clinton was appointed to the New York City Department of Probation as the Deputy Commissioner for adult operations in 2011. In this capacity, he was responsible for the oversight of a division that supervised approximately 24,000 clients on probation and led a series of innovative initiatives, including the Neighborhood Opportunity Networks (NeONs) and Arches Transformative Mentoring (the first iteration of Credible Messenger Mentoring).
Other positions held by Lacey over his 30-year career include project manager with the W. Haywood Burns Institute, addressing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in several jurisdictions around the nation (2005-2010); director of the Youth Justice Program at Vera Institute of Justice, where he led an initiative to build collaborative relationships between community-based youth advocates and system based juvenile justice officials from various jurisdictions around the nation (2004-2005); and associate executive director of Friends of Island Academy, where developed services for 16 to 24-year-olds at Riker’s Island in New York City (1992 – 2004).
Clinton is an experienced trainer, facilitator, writer, and keynote speaker on such issues as racial disparity, comprehensive re-entry services, gang/power group intervention strategies, and overall youth development. In addition, he has studied justice systems and provided trainings around the nation, as well as in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Barbados, Norway, and Finland.
He has a B.A. in Latin American and Caribbean History from Herbert H. Lehman College (City University of New York) and is a graduate of the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management at Columbia University. Clinton is married, the father of two sons and a daughter and has one granddaughter.
