Latest career twist for former journalist and JFSA vp: Ajo justice of the peace DEBORAH MAYAAN Special to the AJP
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ARIZONA JEWISH POST, February 9, 2018
Photo: Andrew Sisk
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long, winding and unexpected road took Tucson native John Peck from the Old Pueblo to Ajo, a small Arizona community of 3,300 people, just 40 miles from the Mexican border. From editor, to economic developer, community activist and nonprofit leader, he now finds himself sitting on the justice court bench, as a restorative justice advocate and justice of the peace. Peck was ready to do something new when he made the move to Ajo in 2008. He was a journalist and managing editor at the Arizona Daily Star from 1974-1991. He spent the next three years on a family farm in Indiana, co-founding a governmental economic development unit and a community foundation. Back in Tucson by 1994, he was associate director of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona before joining the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona in 1995 as associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, where he initiated programs including the Southern Arizona Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, the LGBT Jewish Inclusion Project (later renamed JPride), and with Nancy Mellan, the Jewish Arts Alliance. Later he was JFSA’s senior vice president for
Judge John Peck with his “St. Notorious” at Art Under the Arches Gallery, January 2018.
community relations and strategic planning. Peck moved to Ajo as chief operating officer at the International Sonoran Desert Alliance, which focuses on economic development through the arts. He moved on to the Ajo Copper News and also served on the Western Pima County Community Council. He served as an
intern for a presiding justice of the peace and when his mentor’s term ended in 2014, Peck ran for the post and was elected. There’s more than enough to keep him busy dealing with drug trafficking, drug addiction and domestic violence. Ajo has a high rate of unemployment and large numbers of vacant and neglected houses following the mine closing in the 1980s. He’d heard of the restorative justice movement earlier in his newspaper days. Restorative justice personalizes a crime by having the victims, offenders and community mediate a restitution agreement to the satisfaction of each. And in the ’90s he’d had a memorable discussion with a Jerusalem attorney on restoration based on changing behavior and making restitution versus punishment. In Ajo, a local community advocate and a behavioral health leader introduced Peck to Circles of Peace, a restorative justice model that enhanced his embrace of the concept. Community counselor and behavioral health clinician Emily Saunders says, “with the respect John has garnered in Ajo, and his integrity, he’s giving people a vision of what’s possible with restorative practices. John exemplifies the spirit of restorative practices. See Justice, page 16