After nearly 35 years with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, chief of population management, Jennifer Hendricks retired on June 12, 2020.
Hendricks began her corrections career at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Coal Township as a records specialist. She eventually became the records administrator and worked to create the Centralized Sentence Computation Unit.
Jennifer Hendricks with her husband, Brian, who retired from the DOC on Dec. 28, 2019.
Throughout her career, Hendricks was elected to the Board of the National Association of Extradition Officials, she was the Interstate Corrections Compact coordinator and assisted in the implementation of JNET, Megan's law and DNA testing for the department.
Hendricks was one of the first employees in the Office of Population Management (OPM), where she became the chief of population management. During her time with OPM, she was instrumental in implementing the Inmate Assignment Decision Support System and assisted with the closure of four prisons (SCIs Pittsburgh [twice], Cresson, Greensburg and Graterford).
Hendricks spent her last three months helping the DOC manage the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to career highlights mentioned previously, Hendrick's corrections career included:
- Working for a week with the FBI Profilers from Quantico reviewing some inmates to determine if they had the potential to be serial killers.
- Working with IT contractors to create and implement a sentence computation program that could compute the underlapping sentences and show all crimes and automatically create the DC-16 Sentence Status Summary.
- Assisting with the move of inmates from SCI Graterford to SCI Phoenix.
- Participated on the original committee to implement the Security Threat Group Management Unit program.
- Assisted with COVID-19 to stop all inmate movements and also to move inmates within the system.
DOC officials thank Hendricks for her work over the years and wish her the best as she begins the next chapter of her life.