The corrections expert appointed just a month ago to direct an overhaul of the nation’s troubled immigration detention system is leaving the Obama administration to be commissioner of correction for New York City, Department of Homeland Security officials said on Tuesday.

The Bloomberg administration would neither confirm nor deny the appointment of Dr. Schriro to head the city’s Department of Correction, where she was an assistant commissioner 20 years ago. But Homeland Security officials said the announcement was expected Wednesday afternoon.

“It will be a huge gain for them,” said Dr. Homer D. Venters, an expert in detention health care and one of many advocates with whom Dr. Schriro met around the country as she reviewed the detention system. “There’s a very short supply of people who are operationally experienced but also are committed to improving the plight of people within these systems.”

The city’s jail complex, much of it on Rikers Island, has been plagued by recent scandals, including the fatal beating of a prisoner, accusations that correction officers had turned discipline over to gang members, and the revelation that a city chaplain had arranged a lavish bar mitzvah party in jail for the son of a prisoner. The commissioner, Martin F. Horn, retired on July 31.

For a veteran correction director like Dr. Schriro, who led corrections in Missouri before tackling the Arizona prisons when Ms. Napolitano was governor there, fixing Rikers may be less challenging than refocusing immigration detention.

(Source: NY Times)