Dr. Peters is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy at the University of South Florida (USF), where he has served as a faculty member since 1986, and as Department Chair from 2004-2011. Dr. Peters holds a joint appointment in USF’s College of Public Health. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Florida State University, following a pre-doctoral internship at the University of North Carolina, School of Medicine, and is a licensed Psychologist in Florida. Dr. Peters has served as Principal Investigator and Director for several grant projects, including a NIDA P30 Research Core Center on Co-Occurring Disorders, Justice, and Multidisciplinary Research. He currently serves on the Florida Supreme Court’s Steering Committee on Problem-Solving Courts, and has been a faculty member of the National Judicial College since 2014. He also serves on the editorial boards for the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, the Drug Court Review, the Journal of Dual Diagnosis, Addictology, and the Journal for Advancing Justice. Dr. Peters served as Chair and Co-Editor of the SAMHSA/CSAT Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) #44 on “Substance Abuse Treatment for Adults in the Criminal Justice System”. He is also the lead author of the monograph “Screening and Assessment of Co-Occurring Disorders in the Justice System” (3rd edition) which was published by SAMHSA in 2019. In 2015, Dr. Peters served as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He received a second Fulbright Specialist grant in 2017 for work with colleagues from the Universidad Catolica in Paraguay. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in developing guidelines on “Treatment Alternatives to Conviction or Punishment”, and is a member of the Treatment Expert Advisory Group (TEAG) for the Colombo Plan.
