PbS

Tim Decker was appointed as the Director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services in January 2007. For the past 26 years he has served in a variety of leadership positions with the Missouri Department of Social Services and the Greater Kansas City Local Investment Commission (LINC); one of Missouri’s innovative public/private community partnerships focused on citizen engagement, local governance, natural helping networks, and neighborhood-based services.

Tim previously served as a program manager and administrator with the Division of Youth Services from 1984 – 1993. During this time, the agency was engaged in major system transformation toward more humane, therapeutic, developmental, and effective approaches to juvenile justice. Tim managed programs throughout Missouri’s continuum of care including community, moderate and secure care facilities; serving as an Assistant Regional Administrator in the Northwest Region.

Tim worked from 1994-1995 with the Missouri Family & Community Trust statewide system change initiative; and has served as a social worker, therapist, and treatment coordinator with agencies in the private non-profit sector. Tim was certified as a national trainer for Families and Schools Together from 1999 - 2007, exemplary model prevention program with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Tim earned his degree in Social Work and Psychology in 1982 from Park University in Parkville, Missouri and completed the Institute for Education Leadership Education Policy Fellowship Program in 2007.

Tim serves as a frequent presenter on topics such as juvenile justice reform, results-based accountability, family and community engagement; and organizational leadership, management, and culture change.

John Gomez is the Director of the Colorado Division of Youth Corrections (DYC), which is a Division within the Colorado Department of Human Services. John was appointed Director of DYC in February 2005. He began his 20-year career in State service as a Senior Analyst with the Colorado General Assembly’s Joint Budget Committee, where he worked for more than six years. In that capacity, John was afforded a unique view of State Government, and worked on budget and policy issues related to the Department of Corrections, the Judicial Department, Public Health programs, and numerous Human Services programs, including the Division of Youth Corrections. In July of 1996, John moved to the Department of Human Services’ Budget Office, where he managed the DYC budget. In March of 1998, he was appointed Associate Director for the Division of Youth Corrections and since that time, has been instrumental in overseeing many program improvements in the Division, and has effectively advocated for resources to serve the DYC detained and committed populations. As Director, John has led a major reform effort in the State’s commitment system, leveraging evidence-based principles and practices, and developing a sophisticated continuum of treatment services that has helped produce a dramatic decrease in the Division’s commitment population, as well as significant savings to the State’s General Fund budget. John is currently Treasurer of the Board of Directors for the National Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators.

Commissioner Jane E. Tewksbury was appointed in 2005 as the head of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS), an Executive Branch agency which provides detention, corrections and parole services for youth in the state’s juvenile justice system. .

The Commissioner’s progressive reform agenda includes detention reform using the JDAI framework of the Annie E. Casey foundation; the improvement of the quality and efficacy of the program services youth receive while in DYS facilities using DBT for its clinical modality and the state’s public school requirements for its educational model; and newly designed “wrap-around” re-entry services for youth released to the community under DYS supervision.

Commissioner Tewksbury is committed to working from within the juvenile justice system to ensure that the system’s focus is on accountability and positive youth development as a means to improve outcomes for juvenile offender and thereby, protect long term public safety – change which will last beyond her tenure.

Commissioner Tewksbury has served in a variety of human service and criminal justice-related positions throughout her legal career including service as an Assistant Attorney General and an Assistant District Attorney. During her tenure at the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, Ms. Tewksbury established the office’s nationally recognized priority unit for the prosecution of serious and habitual violent juvenile offenders.

Ms. Tewksbury served as the Legal Counsel to the Attorney General and as the General Counsel for a $70 million dollar private provider before becoming the Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Public Safety in 2003. She was later appointed as the Commonwealth’s first Undersecretary for Forensic Services overseeing the State Police Crime Lab, the Medical Examiner’s office, the Criminal History Systems Board and the state’s emergency 911 system. .

Selected in 1993 as a Fellow in the Children and Family Fellowship of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Commissioner Tewksbury was deployed to the Arkansas Department of Juvenile Justice and later to the Maryland Subcabinet on Children, Youth and Families, to work on state level systems reform efforts affecting disadvantaged children and families.

As a member of the 1992 Juvenile Justice Commission of the Supreme Judicial Court, Ms. Tewksbury co-chaired the CHINS Subcommittee which recommended a repeal of the state’s CHINS law, an issue now before the Massachusetts State Legislature.

Commissioner Tewksbury also sits on the Board of Directors of the Children’s Trust Fund which leads statewide efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect by supporting parents and strengthening families.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School and Harvard/Radcliffe College, Commissioner Tewksbury has considerable teaching and speaking experience and has published a number of legal articles on the rights of individuals with disabilities, elder abuse and domestic violence.

Colette S. Peters has served as Director of the Oregon Youth Authority since July 2009.

As Director, she is responsible for overseeing the operations of the state’s juvenile corrections agency, which serves approximately 2,000 youth offenders ages 12-24 at any given time — 900 in custody and another 1,100 on parole or probation. OYA operates 11 youth correctional facilities across the state charged with protecting the public, holding youth offenders accountable, and providing opportunities for reformation in safe environments.

In joining the agency, Ms. Peters was building on an already diverse career in corrections and a long-standing interest in juvenile justice, public safety and victims’ rights. Prior to joining the Oregon Youth Authority, she served for several years as Assistant Director and Inspector General for the Oregon Department of Corrections. In that role she shared responsibility for more than 14,000 inmates and provided direction, planning, communication and accountability to and for DOC’s internal and external stakeholders. Her background also includes providing nonpartisan criminal justice and public safety research, analysis and recommendations to Colorado lawmakers as a research associate with the Colorado Legislative Council. For three years before that, she served as a victim advocate and crisis mediator in the Victim Assistance Unit of the Denver Police Department. Her early experience includes serving as a youth counselor at Youth Homes of Mid-America, a close-custody facility in Johnston, Iowa, and as a counselor to youth with criminal histories in the Legacy Shelter for Boys in Minneapolis.

Today, in addition to her responsibilities as Director, Ms. Peters is active on a number of state boards and committees established to address issues related to juvenile justice, child and youth development, and public safety. These include the Child Welfare Advisory Committee, Children’s Justice Alliance Board, Full-Day Kindergarten Implementation Committee, Governor’s Re-Entry Council, Oregon Juvenile Department Directors Association Executive Committee, and the Oregon Youth Authority Advisory Committee.

A native of the Midwest, Ms. Peters earned her master’s degree in criminal justice from the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado in Denver, and her bachelor’s in psychology from the College of Saint Benedict in Saint Joseph, Minnesota.