Retired Ada County sheriff hired to turn around troubled Miami-Dade jail system

Hoping to end nine years of federal court supervision of Miami-Dade County’s jails, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has given a retired sheriff from Idaho authority to implement reforms needed to make it safer for inmates and staff.

Gary Raney, who served for 10 years as the elected sheriff of Ada County, now holds the title of compliance director at Miami-Dade’s Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, a county agency under Levine Cava that houses more than 4,000 people on a given day. Raney started in June and bills $275 an hour, with full compensation capped at $250,000, according to a county contract released Wednesday.

At a court hearing Wednesday, the former Ada County sheriff walked a federal judge through his plan to fix outdated management systems at Corrections and turn around what Raney described as a bureaucracy resistant to change or innovation.

“We need to change that culture,” Raney, who ran the Ada County jail and is now a consultant on incarceration practices, told U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom. “If you give me a little more time, I’m telling you it will improve.”

Raney remains a consultant under county contract, with J.D. Patterson, a retired county police chief, still the interim Corrections director. But Levine Cava said she’s put Raney in charge of forcing through changes required under a 2013 county settlement with the Department of Justice over failings in the jail system’s mental-health care and safety provisions, including for suicide prevention.

“We’re in reform mode,” Levine Cava said.

She said Raney reports to her, and has recommended two candidates for a permanent Corrections director she hopes to hire by the end of 2022. Levine Cava removed the prior Corrections director, Daniel Junior, in early 2022 over dissatisfaction with reports from court monitors of the jails, who have bemoaned the lack of progress on safety as suicides continue. Four inmates killed themselves this year, according to monitor reports.

Susan McCampbell, the independent monitor of Miami-Dade jails since the start of the case, said at the hearing she’s so frustrated with the county’s lack of progress that she’s quitting at the end of the year. While she recommended Raney as a turnaround consultant, she said the changes he’s championing were already suggested by her team in various reports throughout the years.

“Did nobody read it?” McCampbell said to Bloom. “Did nobody take it seriously?”

Levine Cava told Bloom she’s made fixing the jails a priority, and has confidence Raney’s plan of a data-driven management system with strict protocols will improve Corrections’ long-standing problems.

“I came on as mayor to be a person who takes care of people under my jurisdiction. I take it extremely personally what goes on in those jails,” said Levine Cava, a former social worker and lawyer who said she once represented inmates with mental-health issues. “I have made it a point daily to be informed about what is going on.”

Bloom said she was “optimistic” with Levine Cava’s “active involvement” in a case that started nine years ago under the mayor’s predecessor, Carlos Gimenez. But the judge also said she remains discouraged by the lack of progress.

“I am frustrated that it has taken as long as it has,” Bloom said. “I am deeply concerned.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2022 at 4:27 PM with the headline "Retired Ada County sheriff hired to turn around troubled Miami-Dade jail system."