The Metropolitan Detention Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York is shown on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.
John Minchillo/AP
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John Minchillo/AP
NEW YORK — As they fought unsuccessfully to keep Sean “Diddy” Combs out of prison after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, the music mogul’s lawyers highlighted a litany of horrors at the Brooklyn federal prison he was headed to: horrific conditions, rampant violence and multiple deaths.
Combs, 54, was sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday — a place described as “hell on earth” and an “ongoing tragedy” — after pleading not guilty in a case that accuses him of physically and sexually abusing women for more than a decade.
The facility, New York City’s only federal prison, has been plagued by problems since it opened in the 1990s. In recent years, its conditions have been so harsh that some judges have refused to send inmates there. It has also housed a number of high-profile inmates, including R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said, “We also take seriously the staffing and other issues at MDC Brooklyn.” An agency team is working to address the problems, including adding permanent correctional and medical staff, addressing more than 700 outstanding maintenance requests and addressing concerns from judges.
A judge on Wednesday rejected a request by Combs’ lawyers to let him await trial under house arrest at his $48 million mansion on an island in Miami Beach, Florida.
What is the Metropolitan Detention Center?
The Bureau of Prisons opened the facility, known as MDC Brooklyn, as a prison in the early 1990s.
It is primarily used for the post-arrest detention of people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Other inmates serve short sentences there after their conviction.
Located in an industrial area of Brooklyn’s waterfront, the center houses about 1,200 inmates, down from more than 1,600 in January. It has outdoor recreation facilities, a medical unit with exam rooms and a dental office. It has a separate wing for educational programs and the prison library.
The Bureau of Prisons closed its crumbling Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in 2021, leaving MDC Brooklyn as its only facility in the nation’s largest city.
What are the problems with MDC Brooklyn?
Inmates have long complained of widespread violence, appalling living conditions, understaffing and trafficking of drugs and other contraband, sometimes facilitated by staff. At the same time, they say they have been subjected to frequent lockdowns and not allowed to leave their cells for visits, roll calls, showers or exercise.
In June, Uriel Whyte, 37, was stabbed to death at the prison. A month later, Edwin Cordero, 36, died after being injured in a fight. At least four people in the prison have committed suicide in the past three years.
Cordero’s attorney, Andrew Dalack, told the New York Times that his client was simply the victim of an “overcrowded, understaffed and neglected federal prison that is hell on earth.”
At least six MDC Brooklyn staffers have been charged with crimes in the past five years. Some have been accused of accepting bribes or providing contraband such as drugs, cigarettes and cellphones, according to an Associated Press analysis of arrests linked to the agency.
MDC Brooklyn has also been criticized for its response to infrastructure failures and the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, a weeklong power outage sparked unrest among shivering inmates and raised concerns from federal watchdogs. In March 2020, the jail housed the first federal inmate to test positive for COVID-19.
As of last November, according to court documents, MDC Brooklyn was operating at about 55 percent of its full staff, which was stressful for employees and added to its security concerns.
What is being done to solve these problems?
Judges and attorneys have taken note of the situation, lambasting the Bureau of Prisons for its “unsafe and barbaric conditions” and urging the agency to make improvements. Some judges have backed away from sending defendants to the Brooklyn MDC or granted reduced sentences because of the conditions there.
In January, U.S. District Judge Furman took the rare step of allowing Gustavo Chavez, 70, to remain free on bail after his conviction on drug charges rather than locking him up in Brooklyn jail while he awaits sentencing.
“Prosecutors are no longer even fighting, much less contesting that the situation is unacceptable,” Furman wrote.
In August, U.S. District Judge Gary Brown said he would vacate a 75-year-old defendant’s nine-month prison sentence for tax evasion and place him under house arrest if the Bureau of Prisons sent him to the Brooklyn MDC.
In response, the Bureau of Prisons said it had “temporarily suspended” sending all defendants convicted of felonies to prison to serve their sentences. In a statement Tuesday, the agency said 43 people were currently serving sentences in a minimum-security unit at the prison.
What other notable people have been detained at MDC Brooklyn?
Combs is the latest celebrity inmate to be locked up at MDC Brooklyn, joining a list that includes Maxwell, Kelly, Bankman-Fried and rapper Fetty Wap.
Other high-profile detainees include Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli, NXIVM sex cult founder Keith Raniere, former Mexican government official Genaro Garcia Luna and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez Alvarado.
Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Facility closed in 2021 after a series of problems came to light following Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide two years earlier.
The jail, located next to the courthouse where Combs was arraigned, was plagued by poor security, severe staffing shortages and squalid and dangerous conditions, including falling concrete, freezing temperatures and destroyed cells.
People held at the facility were transferred to MDC in Brooklyn or to a medium-security prison in Otisville, New York.
What did Combs’ lawyers and prosecutors say?
Combs’ attorneys argued in filings seeking his release that the Metropolitan Detention Center is not suitable for pretrial detention. They cited recent inmate deaths and concerns shared by judges that the jail is not a place to hold anyone.
Asked about the continued detention of a high-profile inmate like Combs, especially in light of Epstein’s 2019 death, Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “We are concerned about the safety of anyone detained pretrial.”
“I make no connection between Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide and what may or may not happen to other defendants while in pretrial detention,” he added.
Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said Wednesday that the rapper is being held in the MDC Brooklyn Special Handling Unit, which offers an extra layer of security but can make trial preparation more onerous. He has asked that Combs be transferred to a New Jersey prison, but a judge said that’s up to the Bureau of Prisons to decide.
Is it just the Brooklyn MDC, or do all federal prisons have problems?
An ongoing investigation by The Associated Press has exposed deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons, an agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates, 122 facilities and an annual budget of about $8 billion.
AP reporting has revealed dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including inmate assaults and suicides.
In April, the Bureau of Prisons announced it was closing its women’s prison in Dublin, California, known as the “rape club,” abandoning any attempt to reform the facility after an AP investigation revealed staff sexually abused inmates.
In July, President Joe Biden signed legislation strengthening oversight of the Bureau of Prisons after AP reporting exposed the agency’s many failings.
