Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Nevada Department of Corrections gets new director

CARSON CITY — Gov. Brian Sandoval named an East Coast administrator to be director of the Nevada Department of Corrections.

James Dzurenda, who worked in the Connecticut and New York correction agencies for nearly 30 years, will take over the job on April 4. His salary will be $127,721.

Dzurenda was hired after a national search to replace James Cox, who Sandoval asked to resign in September amid controversy over shootings and fights involving inmates at the High Desert State Prison in Clark County. The governor, in an initial news release, said Cox had resigned. But he later confirmed that he fired Cox.

Dzurenda was commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Corrections He was first deputy commissioner in the New York City Corrections Department, where he managed nine city jails with 14,000 staff and 9,000 inmates.

Seventeen people applied for the job, and the list was narrowed to five.

Dzurenda's hiring came after a national organization found the Nevada system understaffed and the Legislature, at the suggestion of Sandoval, added 100 new officers to fill the posts. The system still has trouble filling vacancies in rural Nevada.

The Nevada system, which consists of 19 prisons and conservation camps, has a two-year budget of $521 million and houses more than 12,000 inmates.

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