Mayor Levine Cava picks new director to run Miami-Dade County’s troubled jail system
The head of Broward County’s jail system will take over Miami-Dade’s troubled Corrections Department under a hire announced Wednesday.
Daniella Levine Cava, the Miami-Dade mayor who removed the previous Corrections and Rehabilitation director this year, has hired James Reyes to lead the department, according to a memo. Reyes is a colonel in the Broward Sheriff’s Office running Corrections.
READ MORE: Levine Cava vowed to fix county jails. Court monitor sees ‘failure to competently act’
In recruiting a replacement for the previous director, Daniel Junior, Levine Cava said her administration would conduct a national search. In explaining the local hire, she wrote county commissioners that “the pool of qualified jail directors to take on this role, managing a corrections system with the size and complexity of MDCR, is extremely limited nationwide.”
She said Miami-Dade was lucky to have a qualified candidate in the adjoining county and that Reyes had “extensive experience” dealing with federal oversight from when Broward’s jail system was under court supervision. Reyes is scheduled to start Jan. 16. Reyes will earn $300,000 a year, the mayor’s office said.
The announcement comes two days before Miami-Dade’s next hearing before a federal judge overseeing a Justice Department case from 2013 over failings in the jail system’s mental-health and safety operations. Independent monitors continue to fault the county for not making enough progress on improving Corrections procedures to keep inmates safe from attacks, self-harm and other dangers behind bars.
“Since January 2022, the County has engaged in specific actions to address inmate protection from harm and compliance,” reads part of the monitoring team’s Nov. 22 report. “To date, it is our conclusion that few of these actions have reached the intended objectives.”
Corrections, with an annual budget of roughly $400 million, houses about 4,000 inmates on a typical day.
The Levine Cava administration hired a retired Idaho sheriff, Gary Raney, to implement improvements at Corrections and lead the search for a permanent replacement for Junior, now overseeing security at county-owned PortMiami. Raney and Levine Cava both spoke at the prior federal hearing, and the next one is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Friday.
Miami-Dade has achieved at least partial compliance in some court-ordered requirements, according to the latest report, and the county is about to get a new team of monitors on the case. The Levine Cava administration is making the case that enough progress has been made to end federal monitoring.
This story was originally published December 14, 2022 at 4:50 PM.