For Judge Lincoln Goodwin, serving as a justice of the peace in Harris County was an opportunity to give back after living in the area for over 30 years.

[When my family moved here,] Harris County just really embraced us,” he said. “I have just had an amazing life here, so that was part of my motivation to serve.”

Goodwin was appointed to office by the Harris County Commissioners Court in January 2014 following the death of Precinct 4 Judge J. Kent Adams.

“That’s certainly not the [way] I wanted to be here, but I’m honored to take that mantle,” Goodwin said. “This was always a destination for me right here, just being in this community’s court.”

He was elected to serve another term by Harris County voters in November.

Goodwin moved to Houston from Laramie, Wyoming, in 1982.

Following his graduation from Baylor University and the Texas Tech University School of Law, he returned to Houston to work as a lawyer for both the county and private law firms.

In 1999, he helped to establish the Susan Fortney Award for Ethics, an annual award presented to Texas Tech law students.

The Harris County Precinct 4 court is one of the busiest in the state, filing more than 100,000 cases per year, Goodwin said.

The justice of the peace courts see both civil and criminal cases, ranging from speeding tickets and evictions to juvenile crimes.

Although the majority of those cases are traffic-related, Goodwin said one of the most rewarding aspects of his job is seeing how early interventions can help deter juvenile offenders before they end up in a felony court.

“I grew up in a single-parent home and [without] some great input from my mother and grandparents, I could have had a very different path in life,” he said. “And we see a lot of that in court where you have a young man or woman who is really on that razor’s edge of life. They’ll either head down a path of destruction or a path of having a fruitful, productive life.”

Goodwin said the courts have had success implementing a number of youth programs as a way to build positive relationships.

“I tell young people, ‘You have a tremendous power over your own life; you can decide today what the rest of your life looks like based on the decisions that you make today,’” he said.

Outside of the court chambers, Goodwin said he spends his downtime with his wife, Priscilla, and two daughters visiting the nearby park and Barbara Bush Branch Library.

Goodwin said he believes the work his office does makes the area seem tightly knit.

“The unique thing about this job is you get to be your community’s judge,” Goodwin said. “There’s a huge population that this court serves, but it’s still small in many ways, and I wouldn’t give that up for the world.”