Department of Youth Services Commissioner Jane E. Tewksbury
Jane E. Tewksbury
Commissioner

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 then 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. In 2011, a CHINS reform bill was passed by the Massachusetts state legislature.

Commissioner Tewksbury is a member of the Board of Directors of the Children's Trust Fund (CTF) which leads statewide efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect by supporting parents and strengthening families and an officer in the Council of Juvenile Corrections Administrators, (CJCA) from which she received the Administrator of the year award in 2011.

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

This information is provided by the Department of Youth Services.