The new leadership team at the New Jersey Department of Corrections is headed by Commissioner Devon Brown (left) and Chief of Staff Charles Ellis.

New Commissioner, Chief of Staff Assume Duties

Devon Brown, who has nearly three decades of experience in the correctional field, became commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Corrections in April 2002.

Brown's nomination was confirmed by the New Jersey Senate on March 25. He was sworn into his new post on April 5 in a ceremony that included remarks by Governor James E. McGreevey. Brown assumed his duties as commissioner on April 8.

As head of the New Jersey Department of Corrections, Brown will oversee more than 9,500 employees, 14 institutions and a jurisdictional inmate population of approximately 23,000 housed in state facilities, county jails and community halfway houses.

The commissioner's staff will include Chief of Staff Charles Ellis of Ewing Township, who also assumed his duties on April 8. Ellis spent 23 years with the NJDOC until his appointment as director of operations for the state's Juvenville Justice Commission in November 1999. He began his career with the Department of Corrections in 1976 as a correction officer at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. By 1996, he was associate administrator of Bayside State Prison in Leesburg. In 1999, he served as acting administrator of Mid-State Correctional Facility in Wrightstown.

Brown, a Maryland native, has held a wide array of executive, managerial and direct service positions in the correctional field. Most recently, he was appointed by the United States attorney general in 1998 to serve as the deputy trustee in the Office of the Corrections Trustee for the District of Columbia.

After beginning his career in 1974 as a forensic psychologist in the New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies, Brown obtained a position as a correctional psychologist at the Patuxent Institution in Jessup, Maryland, in 1976. In this capacity, he functioned as a unit treatment team chairperson. He eventually assumed the positions of associate director of behavioral sciences and, ultimately, warden.

In 1991, Brown was appointed warden of the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center, where he remained until becoming assistant commissioner of administration in the Maryland Division of Corrections. Two years later, in 1993, Brown was named director of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Department of Correction and Rehabilitation. He remained at this post until his appointment as deputy trustee in the Office of the Corrections Trustee for the District of Columbia.

In 1997, Brown was awarded the prestigious John B. Pickett Fellowship by the National Institute of Justice at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Brown earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1988. He received a Master of Public Administration Degree from the University of Baltimore in 1984. He also holds a Master of Arts Degree in psychology from the University of Toledo and has completed all requirements for two Ph.D. degrees from this school with the exception of the doctoral dissertation. In 1971, Brown also earned a Bachelor of Science Degree from Morgan State University.