County Executive, Innovative Justice and Planning and Analysis
Travis County
Dr. Jacqueline van Wormer is the County Executive for Innovative Justice and Planning and Analysis for Travis County. She is the former Director of the Center for Advancing Justice at All Rise and holds an Affiliate Faculty position at Washington State University.
Before this appointment, she was an Associate Professor in Sociology at Whitworth University. Dr. van Wormer has held various positions in the criminal justice field, including serving as the Spokane Regional Criminal Justice Administrator, MacArthur Foundation Coordinator for the Benton/Franklin Counties Juvenile Court, Intervention Services Manager, Probation Supervisor and Coordinator for both the Adult and Juvenile Drug programs in Benton/Franklin Counties.
She has lectured and trained extensively across the country and internationally on issues related to courts, pretrial reform and the drug court model. Dr. van Wormer has taught courses in Statistics, Courts and Corrections, Program Evaluation, Juvenile Justice, Drugs and Crime, Research Methods, Crime and Media and Violence Against Women.
Dr. van Wormer has 20 peer reviewed published articles, four book chapters and dozens technical reports focused on risk/need tool development, court model fidelity, detention alternatives, effective treatment options for justice involved individuals, and collaboration among social service agencies.
She has successfully secured, and served as Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on over $17.5 million in grants and contracts, all focused on criminal justice systems improvements.
Dr. van Wormer received her Ph.D. in 2010 from Washington State University. She was awarded the 2017 WSU Woman of Distinction (alumna category) for her work in criminal and juvenile justice reform. Current areas of study and research focus on court responses to the opioid epidemic, measuring implementation challenges in the use of evidence-based practices; bail and pretrial justice reform, interagency collaborative partnership “drift” within court models; and improving predictive validity of risk/need tools.