
George Beto was the Director of the Texas Department of Corrections.
George Beto, Ph.D., whose name is synonymous with the College of Criminal Justice, didn’t start out in a career in criminal justice.
The son of a Lutheran minister, Beto was a graduate of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis when he received his call to come to Concordia College in Austin to teach, eventually serving as president of the institution. He was later appointed to the Texas Prison Board, which began his service in prisons and the criminal justice discipline that stretched from Texas to Illinois to Alabama.
Following the untimely death of O.B. Ellis, director of the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC), Beto was tapped to head the statewide agency.