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NATURAL BRIDGE JUVENILE CORECTIONAL CENTER   HONORED FOR WORK IN JUVENILE JUSTICE FIELD

On November 5, 2009, NBJCC employee, Timothy Turner, was honored for his contributions to the juvenile justice field.  While attending the 33^rd Fall Juvenile Justice Training Institute in Hampton, Turner was presented the Virginia Juvenile Justice Association’s 2009 Meritorious Award in the Area of Residential Services.  The following biography was read:

“This year’s recipient of the Meritorious Service Award in the category of Residential Services is a military veteran, a Mason, a former member of his hometown’s town council, and serves as a deacon of his church.  A talented singer and artist, at one time he was a state basketball champion. He has been a VJJA member since he entered the juvenile justice field in 1984.

He began his career working with children as a part-time child supervisor at the Natural Bridge Forestry Camp for Boys. He worked his way up from supervising delinquent youth in the smallest cottage, to a full time position as the staff supervisor in the largest housing unit at Natural Bridge. From there he was promoted to supervise the overall operation of the facility as a Shift Coordinator. Very soon thereafter, he was promoted again to Lieutenant under the new correctional officer series at the renamed Natural Bridge Juvenile Correctional Center. Working six years as one of the assigned Shift Commanders for the center, his expertise in population control, management and security earned him another promotion to Corrections Captain. He served in that position of Chief of Security until this year.

NATURAL BRIDGE JUVENILE CORECTIONAL CENTER EMPLOYEE HONORED FOR WORK IN JUVENILE JUSTICE FIELD

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Having started his career part-time working directly with wards of the state, in June of 2009 he was promoted again. Now as the Assistant Superintendent for Security, he assumed the duty to manage the overall policies and procedures that directly affected the wards living at Natural Bridge. His areas of direct oversight included Security, Building and Grounds, Food Service, Training, and Safety. Being responsible for security over a facility with no locked physical barriers and no perimeter fences is difficult, but he did so during a period in which no wards escaped. His attentiveness to detail and population management helped ensure the continuance of a long standing tradition at Natural Bridge to provide the best possible treatment and education to children in the least restricted environment possible. 

During the years he grew as a professional, he also devoted his time to his family. From raising two daughters, to attending the Million Man march in Washington, our recipient now turns his attention in a different direction. Having accepted more and more responsibility throughout his career, his professional position abruptly ended with the closure of the juvenile correctional center he worked at most of his life. With only thirty days notice to close, he set his own feelings and concerns aside and charted the course toward closure. He helped successfully transfer and place all the residents from this minimum security facility, some back to greater levels of security. Despite the residents’ and staffs’ expressions of personal grief at their lives being interrupted, he helped many of them accept the change and did so administratively in a manner that prevented escape by and injury to residents and staff.  Assisting his visibly shaken staff,he noted to one colleague that he could not concentrate on his own employment circumstance; he had to

“help these young people get through this first.” Few of us are asked in our careers to close a facility. It is not something taught in college, and unless you are one of the decision-makers it is not something you can prepare for. Our recipient had to fall back on his years of supervisory experience, his kind nature and temperate attitude to see himself and his center through this agonizing time extemporaneously.

Our recipient lives in the mountainous town of Glasgow with his wife, Betty, and now enters a new phase: retirement - with a concentration on his two grandchildren, Josiah and Leland. Today we present the Virginia Juvenile Justice Association’s 2009 Meritorious Service Award in the category of Residential Services to TIMOTHY E. TURNER.”