Martin F. Horn is Distinguished Lecturer in Corrections at the John Jay College, City University of New York and serves as Executive Director of the New York State Sentencing Commission by appointment of the Chief Judge of the State of New York. Horn is also a Managing Director of KeyPoint Government Solutions, Inc. He was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to serve as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation, effective Jan. 1, 2002. A year later Mayor Bloomberg appointed him to simultaneously serve as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, the City’s jail system, and he held both positions simultaneously until July 31, 2009. As Correction Commissioner, Horn rebuilt morale, accountabilityand integrity following a series of highly publicized scandals. He reduced suicides and cut jail violence in half. Under his leadership several conditions of confinement lawsuits were satisfactorily resolved. Horn reduced the introduction of drugs into jail by initiating New York’s first drug interdiction program including the first wide scale drug testing in the City’s jails and he reduced suicides among inmates.

Horn created the largest and most ambitious jail reentry program in the nation. He reengineered the intake process to insure all inmates were properly screened for vulnerability, possess the documents needed to work upon release, created transitional job opportunities for persons released from jail, and created systems to identify high frequency jail and shelter users. He worked with the City’s housing and homeless services community toaddress the needs for housing of discharged persons. As Probation Commissioner Horn focused on high-risk offenders, improving the delivery of treatment for addiction to alcoholand other drugs, employment of offenders, the Department’s IT capacity, and streamlining the probation violation process. As a result of his efforts recidivism among adult probationers dropped faster than in any other jurisdiction in New York State. His “Project Zero” effort led to major changes in the City’s approach to juvenile delinquents, paving the way for a 70% reduction in the City’s placement of juvenile delinquents and a tripling of the number of alleged delinquents diverted following arrest.

Horn served, from March 1995 until January 2000, as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Corrections. During his tenure staff and inmate safety and health care improved, suicides were reduced, three long standing consent decrees were dissolved, and classification and information systems were modernized. He created an innovative addiction treatment program that for the first time provided funding for post release treatment of released offenders. Under his leadership, improvements to the provision of mental health services were made including an enlargement of facility based acute care and step-down programs, “rule out” protocols to keep mentally ill inmates out of punitive segregation, and innovative release programs for inmates with mental illness were initiated. Prior to his return to his home state of New York he served as a member of Governor Tom Ridge’s Senior Staff as Secretary of Administration for the state of Pennsylvania. He also chaired the state’s Tobacco Settlement Investment Board, the Pennsylvania Employees’ Benefit Trust Fund, the ImaginePA Executive Committee (Enterprise Resource Management), and the JNET Council (Justice Network), and was a board member of the Public School Employees’ Retirement System.

Horn earlier served as executive director and chief operating officer for the New York State Division of Parole, and held a variety of positions within the Department of Correctional Services including Superintendent of Hudson Correctional Facility. He was an assistant professor of criminal justice at the State University College in Utica, New York from 1975 to 1977. He began his career as a New York State Parole Officer in 1969. He has served as co-chair of the American Bar Association Corrections Committee and has chaired the policy and resolutions committees of both the American Correctional Association and the Association of State Corrections Administrators. He is a Commissioner of the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections and a member of the Advisory Board of the New York State Commission on Quality of Care for Persons with Disabilities established by the State’s SHU Exclusion Law.