The notorious federal prison in New York City where hip hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs is locked up on a slew of sex trafficking charges is undergoing an overhaul.
The Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset, Brooklyn, also known as MDC, has a reputation for extreme violence, multiple deaths, squalid conditions, safety issues, rampant staffing shortages, smuggling of drugs and contraband, some carried out by its prison staff, and food that contains maggots – that have since been disproved.
The jail has been deemed so dangerous that some judges have refused to send other violent offenders there. Some of the infamous prisoners detained there include Ghislaine Maxwell, Sam Bankman-Fried and R. Kelly.
The Urgent Action Team made up of a group of senior officials from The Federal Bureau of Prisons have been working on improving the decades-old facility.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, upgrades and repairs on electrical and plumbing, heating and air-conditioning systems and food service, were completed over several weeks in the Spring, an NBC News report revealed.
Combs, who pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to sex trafficking charges, is being held in solitary confinement – away from the comforts of his $48 million mansion – and on suicide watch.
His lawyer Marc Agnifilo, contends that MDC is unfit for pretrial detention, and is working to get him moved to a jail in New Jersey as he awaits trial.
Top officials from the group have made frequent visits to the prison and meet weekly to address issues faced by the 1,200 inmates who are housed there.
On Friday, the group announced some of the new changes, including a 20 percent increase of correctional officers and medical staff. However, there are still 157 positions vacant, as per the news outlet.
According to court filings, MDC was operating at about 55 percent of full staffing.
The agency cites one of the reasons for the staffing shortage of correctional officers nationwide, particularly New York City, is the high cost of living in the city and starting salaries much lower than other law enforcement agencies.
To deal with this growing issue, many officers at MDC have had to work repeated overtime shifts. The Bureau of Prison have tried to counteract that by officers have increased retention bonuses to increase salaries.
The official who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity said that members from the Urgent Action Team are giving the jail ‘sustained attention’ and ‘sustained leadership focus’ to mitigate issues at the lockup, NBC reported.
MDC was pushed into the spotlight after the 2019 suicide of Jeffrey Epstein at another New York City prison, Metropolitan Correctional Facility.
That prison was cited for lax security, grim conditions and a crumbling infrastructure. It was shuttered by The Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2021.
This summer there were two fatal stabbings and another stabbing in April where an inmate was knifed 44 times by MS-13 gang members at MDC, as per NBC reported.
Improvements to MDC Brooklyn comes amid an increase scrutiny from Congress and a new law overhauling oversight of the federal prison system, and since Combs arrival had heightened the troubled federal prison system.
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