The Detention Center
Nassau County Correctional Center
- Operated byNassau County Sheriff's Department (Corrections Division)
- Jail address100 Carman Avenue, East Meadow, NY 11554
- VisitingVisits are scheduled through an application on the county's own domain; visits run a minimum of one hour per session
- Oversight boardA Nassau County Correctional Center Board of Visitors investigates complaints and grievances and reports periodically to the Sheriff
- Segregated confinementThe county posts a HALT Act report of the number of people in segregated confinement, citing state standard 7076.7(b)
Source: Nassau County Correctional Center · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Robert A. Matarazzo (Acting Sheriff)
- Runs the jailYes — the Nassau County Sheriff's Department runs the Nassau County Correctional Center through its Corrections Division; there is no separate county department of correction.
- How the office is filledNassau's sheriff is appointed by the County Executive under the county charter; the county's elected-officials page does not list a sheriff.
- Also namedThe Sheriff's Department page lists Michael Sposato as Commissioner alongside the Acting Sheriff.
- Corrections Division phone516-572-4200
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Nassau County Sheriff's Department · checked 2026-09-20
The Judges
New York's county and supreme court justices are state judicial officers, not county officials; city, town and village justices also set bail for people arrested in their areas.
Nassau County Circuit Court
- Not found
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-20
The County Legislature or Board of Supervisors
They pay for the jail. In most counties the sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe jail budget, the building itself, and the agreements that rent its beds to other agencies. Several counties also have an elected County Executive. In Westchester a county Department of Correction runs the jail rather than the sheriff.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations, and state oversight. The sheriff is separately elected and keeps the jail in most counties (NY Correction Law art. 20), while the State Commission of Correction sets the standards, inspects the facility and investigates every death in custody. The five New York City counties have no county sheriff jail at all — the city Department of Correction runs them.
- NoteNassau County also has an elected County Executive. The Legislature has 19 districts.
- The boardNassau County Legislature →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Who runs the jail was checked on the county's own pages, as the brief requires: the Correctional Center sits under the Sheriff's Department, not a separate county department of correction.
- Two county pages disagree on who the sheriff is. The Sheriff's Department page names Dr. Robert A. Matarazzo as Acting Sheriff and Michael Sposato as Commissioner; a county 'Corrections' topic index page still names Sheriff James Dzurenda. The department's own page was taken as the better source and the disagreement is recorded here rather than resolved.
- The county's elected-officials page does not list a sheriff at all.
- No public in-custody roster was found on the county domain. The visiting scheduler is not a roster, and the only lookup linked is the commercial VINE service, which is not counted.
- The Office of Management and Budget publishes the operating budget, capital budget and multi-year plan.
- The county publishes a HALT Act segregated-confinement report, but no death-in-custody record, no county copy of an inspection report, no PREA page, no contract and no phone, commissary or video-visit rates were found.
- The supplied URL was the county root, which opened but carried no sheriff or corrections link; the departments index and the A-Z index were used to reach them.
- State inspection/oversight: New York's State Commission of Correction oversees every local correctional facility in the state, sets the minimum standards they must meet, inspects them, and investigates every death in custody.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Nassau County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the legislators who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-09-20 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered