Jason Bennett has been named as the permanent superintendent of the Olympic Corrections Center (OCC) in Forks, WA by Assistant Secretary Robert Herzog, effective July 1, 2017. Bennett was appointed acting superintendent of Olympic Corrections Center on January 19, 2017, and has 24 years of experience within the Washington State Department of Corrections.

“Jason is uniquely positioned to lead Olympic Corrections Center due to his length of tenure at the facility,” stated Assistant Secretary Herzog. “Jason knows the history of the institution, the expected levels of success and how to progressively move forward the facility’s relationships and daily work of public safety. Over his 12 years at Olympic, he has gained both operational and programmatic knowledge and experience. He’s also skilled at the significant focus and efforts on reentry that Olympic has undertaken.”

Bennett began his career at Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC) in 1993 as a correctional officer. Over the years, he promoted through the uniformed custody ranks to correctional captain and worked at multiple facilities including McNeil Island Corrections Center, Stafford Creek Corrections Center (SCCC), and Olympic Corrections Center. Bennett has a solid classification and programs background serving as a correctional unit supervisor, and most recently as the correctional program manager at OCC. He has been an active instructor, providing training on subjects from emergency response and control tactics through impacting behavior change. He has practical application experience in emergency response serving as the assistant team leader for the SCCC emergency response team and as incident commander at OCC.

He earned his Associate of Arts degree in June 2014 from Peninsula College.

Bennett takes over from John Aldana, who is retiring on June 30, 2017, after 30 years with the Washington State Department of Corrections.