Superintendent William C. Cope
Rutherford County Correctional Work Center

The Family Center is proud to recognize William Cope with our 2021 ACE Awareness Award for his compassion, humility, and openness to ensuring parents - incarcerated through the Rutherford County Correctional Work - receive opportunities to learn how their own Adverse Childhood Experiences/Adverse Community Environments often led to their current situations and to participate in programs that help their children create more resilient life journeys.

Since 2010 he’s been instrumental in allowing The Family Center to offer Positive Parenting groups in the facility and in 2019 led the Keeping Families Connected collaborative effort through an Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Program grant offering 1:1 support and Family Coaching for families with incarcerated parents (even through the pandemic!). He is known for referring to adults under his team’s care as “residents” rather than “inmates” and ensures their children have more potential in life as a result of their parents maintaining contact, healing old wounds, and breaking potential multigenerational cycles of childhood trauma.

Superintendent Cope is a graduate of the TN Corrections Institute, the TN Corrections Academy, and the National Institute of Corrections Jail Administration Program. He serves as an American Correctional Association certified Auditor/Inspector and is a TN Corrections Institute Certified Instructor. In 2021, he received the Jail Administrator of the Year award from the Tennessee Corrections Institute for his exhibiting excellence in the local corrections environment specifically related to core concepts of accountability, rehabilitation, reentry, and public safety. He lives in Rutherford County with his wife and children and supports programs that help create a community where all children thrive.