Wayne Bear, NPJS CEO, Executive Director JDCAP of Pennsylvania

Mr. Wayne Bear is the CEO of the National Partnership for Juvenile Services (NPJS) and the Executive Director of the Juvenile Detention Centers and Alternative Programs (JDCAP) of Pennsylvania.  Prior to his current role in NPJS, Mr. Bear was President of the National Juvenile Detention Association (NJDA) and Chairperson of the Critical Issues and Policy Direction Committee, which is responsible for developing and promulgating all of the Position Statements for the organization. Mr. Bear’s twenty-seven plus year career path includes work as a detention front line staff, juvenile probation officer, residential program management and private practice as a licensed social worker. 

Mr. Bear saw his initial involvement in NPJS as a means to address the need to improve the juvenile justice system, and to work collaboratively to identify and promote a group or systems concept that produces more power and leverage and includes all parties of the system from law enforcement, criminal justice, and youth services in order to implement sustainable change and a functioning organization with providers participating in a holistic manner of services.

 In both his role as the Chairperson of the Critical Issues Committee and now as the CEO of NPJS, Mr. Bear has unwaveringly lead the organization down the path of research, best practices, and data based decision making.  Mr. Bear stated that there has been a lot of good research conducted within the field of juvenile justice that has been focused in two areas, 1) diverting low risk youth away from exposure to higher risk youth within juvenile justice facilities, and 2) moving the direction of service provision from a punitive approach to a more clinically (evidence-informed) approach,  In his mind, his single most important role is to guide the field toward successful implementation of operations to address both of these areas of focus.