Victor Petreca

Dr. Victor Petreca's work sits at the intersection of forensic nursing, mental health, and criminal justice, with a focus on how systems respond to behavioral health crises and trauma. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Forensic Nursing and an Assistant Professor at Boston College’s Connell School of Nursing, where he teaches and conducts research in forensic psychiatric nursing.

His career began in correctional settings, providing psychiatric care across county, state, and federal systems. That work exposed persistent gaps in crisis response and diversion pathways and shaped Petreca's transition into research focused on system-level reform. Over time, his work has centered on police-led and interprofessional crisis intervention models, including roles for nurses in first-line response.

Petreca currently directs a statewide crisis training and research initiative in Massachusetts, where he supports funded programs, training implementation, data collection, and applied research. This infrastructure has supported multiple studies examining diversion outcomes and informed the development of the Nurse–Police Assistance Crisis Team (N-PACT), a model proposing forensic nurses as co-responders within police-led crisis teams.

His broader research agenda includes violence and trauma across forensic contexts, including strangulation, and adverse childhood experiences in juvenile justice populations. He is also deeply committed to education and mentorship. At Boston College, Petreca has developed forensic mental health coursework and co-created a forensic nursing minor, with an emphasis on preparing students for both scholarly and applied forensic practice.

Petreca currently serves as Interim Section Editor for Research at the Journal of the Academy of Forensic Nursing. My work has been recognized with the Connell Award for Excellence in Teaching and Clinical Research, and the inaugural DAISY Nurse Leader Award in Forensic Nursing.