Ep 38: Dir. Colette S. Peters on Leading Healthy Change in Public Safety

Director Colette S. Peters, on Leading Healthy Change in Public Safety, speaking with Fleet Maull. Leading the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) since February 2012, Director Colette S. Peters has ultimate oversight of an agency with 4,700 employees, a biennial budget of $2 billion, and responsibility for managing 14,700 incarcerated adults in 14 prisons across the state. Director Peters, who is a national advocate for wellness in public safety, active with many national corrections and public safety organizations, discusses Oregon’s justice reinvestment effort, which reduced the prison population and avoided opening additional institutions, their more humanitarian approach to correctional practice known as the Oregon Way, and their very significant investment in staff wellness and resilience. How they responded to six staff suicides in an 18-month period by engaging university research partners to study their staff wellness, their discovery that, despite being widely recognized as a progressive correctional system, one in three of their employees had symptoms of PTSD and over 90% were dealing with significant weight issues or obesity and hypertension. How they made employee wellness their #1 priority, bringing in a mindfulness-based wellness and resiliency training program and making a long-term commitment to staff wellness. Their ongoing exploration of the Norway model and the development of the Oregon Way correctional philosophy. DIRECTOR COLETTE S. PETERS Colette S. Peters has served as Director of the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) since February 2012. She has ultimate oversight of an agency with 4,700 employees, a biennial budget of $2 billion; and responsibility for managing 14,700 incarcerated adults in 14 prisons across the state. Ms. Peters played a crucial role in Oregon’s justice reinvestment effort, which reduced the prison population and avoided opening additional institutions. Under Ms. Peters’ leadership, ODOC enrolled in the Amend at the University of California San Francisco and developed the “Oregon Way.” The goal is to improve employee health and wellness and reduce the use of segregation by transforming environments inside correctional facilities to be more normal and humane. The program has focused efforts on helping the adults in custody positively change their lives and become better neighbors. Ms. Peters holds a master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Colorado in Denver and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the College of Saint Benedict in Saint Joseph, Minnesota.

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