John J. Carway, LMSW
John J. Carway is the former Director of Probation for Nassau County. He was appointed Director of Probation on January 31, 2001 by County Executive Thomas S. Gulotta. He was continued in service as Director by County Executive Thomas S. Suozzi when he came into office on January 1, 2002 until he retired on January 18, 2007 after almost 43 years as a Probation Officer.
John Carway began his Probation career on June 12, 1964, four days after graduating from Fairfield University in Connecticut. He had previously graduated from Chaminade High School in Mineola. His first assignment in Probation was to the Family Offense unit in the Family Division of the Nassau County Probation Department. There he learned to conduct pre dispositional investigations on Family Offense and Family Support cases, trying to determine why men beat their wives and why they would not support their children. He also supervised probationers on Probation for violating Family Offense Orders of Protection. In 1966 he was asked to join a special unit of juvenile Probation Officers known as the Multi-Methods Project. Handling small caseloads of juveniles in the Freeport area, the project sought to use multiple social work methods of casework, groupwork and community organization to combat juvenile crime in several high crime communities. That experience, which required part time course at Adelphi University School of Social Work, motivated him to apply for graduate studies in Social Work at Fordham University where he graduated in 1970 with a Masters Degree in Social Work (M.S.W.). Shortly after graduation his was the first class to take the examination for state certification as a Social Worker. He received his Certified Social Worker certificate on November 12, 1970.
While attending Social Work School at Fordham, John was assigned both to Catholic Charities for field work in casework and to the Economic Opportunity Commission for Community Organization training. Upon graduation, John was promoted to a senior Probation Officer in July 1970 and then to Supervisor in October 1970. After working the summers in between school years and after graduation in the Freeport Probation Outreach unit, he was assigned to supervise a unit of Juvenile Investigation Probation Officers in the Family Division. That assignment was short-lived however and in January 1971, John was promoted to Assistant Deputy Director and assigned as the Assistant Director of Staff Development in the Administration Division. In that position, he was responsible for several Training Specialists and scheduling of all in-service and new employee training. In 1979, with the advent of the state initiative of Intensive Supervision, he was re assigned, part time to the Criminal Division to head up this new program while continuing to be involved in Training matters. In 1980, John wrote the grant and secured Federal funding for a new Warrant Unit in the Department. He went full time to the Criminal Division to oversee both the Warrant Unit, ISP and the Mental Health Unit as well as responsibility for the computerization that was coming to the department during the early eighties.
In 1986, John returned to the Family Division and was placed in charge of an Interagency Task Force on PINS Adjustment Services. As the bureau chief of the Administrative Services Unit, he also oversaw the development of a new automated case management system for the Family Division. He continued there until he returned to the Criminal Division in 1989 where he was in charge of Special Services, including Mental Health, ISP, Warrant Unit, Electronic monitoring and Administrative Services
Then, in August of 1990, John was promoted to Deputy Director and assigned to the Family Division. He stayed there during one of the most traumatic times for the Probation Department; the massive layoffs of 1992 following the County budget crisis that year. In that capacity, he was responsible for the restructuring and downsizing of the Family Division which had lost almost half of the staff assigned there.
1996 brought another promotion, to Chief Deputy Director. In that capacity, he was responsible for the entire Administration Division and generally assisted the Divisional Deputy Directors in the operations of the entire Department.. With the retirement of the former Director in November 1999, John was then Acting Director for almost two years until his appointment as Director in 2001. During that period he had to constantly restructure the Department after massive retirements decimated the staff in 1999 and 2000. He then worked to rebuild the Department. During his tenure as Director he was able to secure 191 promotions and hired over 166 new Probation Officers, Probation Assistants and Support personnel to replace those who had retired. Also, during his term as Director, the Sex Offender Unit, the Gang Unit and the Electronically Assisted Reporting System Unit (EARS) were formed. EARS utilized new speech recognition technology to keep track of low risk probationers and pre-trial releasees. Other innovations included the provisioning of new computers and email for the entire staff and obtaining a fleet of twelve additional vehicles for use by probation officers in the field. Electronic monitoring was expanded to additional offenders and has included GPS monitoring of sex offenders and other violent offenders through a new $500,000 state grant for that purpose.
John has been active in many community organizations, including being an active Member of the Board of Directors of the American Academy for Professional Law Enforcement, Long Island Chapter (www.aapleli.org), and the County Seat Kiwanis where he is Vice President. He is the founder of the Adoption Support Network of Long Island and has maintained a small private counseling practice specializing in post-adoption issues. His post retirement activities include plans to offer consulting services to probation departments, representation of companies seeking to advance probation practice through technology and advocacy of adoption reform legislation.