(CNN) – Described as “disgusting” and in “appalling” conditions, the detention center that music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs now calls home is a far cry from the Miami and Los Angeles mansions he used to live in.
“When he wakes up, he sees the partition walls painted white, instead of the decoration of his mansions,” Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, told CNN on Wednesday.
Cohen knows this very well. He is one of many high-profile inmates who have served time at New York’s infamous Metropolitan Detention Center. The singer R. Kelly, the “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the former cryptocurrency wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried and the rapper Fetty Wap have passed through this center. Currently, the cartel’s alleged leader, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, is being held there awaiting trial on charges of murder and drug trafficking.
On Wednesday, a federal judge denied bail for Combs, saying the bail proposal presented by his defense attorneys was “insufficient” to address the court’s concerns. Judge Andrew Carter said there were “no conditions or conditions” that would reduce the risk of witness tampering or obstruction in Combs’ case. For this reason, the artist will remain in federal custody until the trial is held on charges of criminal association and sex trafficking. Combs pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A trial date has not yet been set for the 54-year-old hip-hop artist, so it is unknown how long he will remain in Brooklyn prison, but following Wednesday’s hearing in which he was denied bail, His lawyer stated that they will appeal the decision.
Notorious for poor living conditions, staff shortages, inmate-on-inmate violence, and power outages, Brooklyn Prison is currently the only federal correctional facility serving the nation’s largest city. This after the Federal Bureau of Prisons closed its Manhattan complex shortly after Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire financier and accused of sex trafficking, died by suicide in 2019.
Asked about the current conditions at MDC, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said that the agency “takes seriously our duty to protect the people entrusted to our custody” and that, therefore, “they review the protocols of security and implement corrective measures when identified as necessary.
The Bureau of Prisons appointed an Urgent Action Team earlier this year “to holistically examine issues at Brooklyn MDC,” spokesperson Emery Nelson said in an email.
“The team’s work is ongoing, but it has already increased permanent staffing at the institution (including officers and medical staff), addressed more than 700 backlogged maintenance requests, and applied a continued approach to the issues raised. in two recent court decisions,” Nelson said.
“It’s a very difficult place to be an inmate,” Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, argued in court Wednesday, telling the judge that his client would have a hard time preparing for trial if he remained there.
The Metropolitan Detention Center, built in the 1990s to address overcrowding in New York prisons, houses inmates awaiting trial in federal courts in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
“He wakes up in a steel bed with a one-and-a-half-inch mattress, no pillow, in a six-by-ten-foot cell that I can assure you is disgusting,” Cohen told CNN on Wednesday. Cohen, who was incarcerated at the prison in 2020, said inmates in the facility’s Special Housing Unit, where Combs is being held, basically have a 3-by-5-foot space in which to move.
“There are no books in the first part, so he’s dealing with a lot of things right now,” Cohen said of what to expect in Combs’ first days at the center.
In June, an inmate awaiting trial on weapons charges, Uriel Whyte, was stabbed to death by another inmate, according to a Bureau of Prisons news release. A month later, inmate Edwin Cordero died in a fight that broke out inside the prison. Cordero’s lawyer declared to The New York Times that his client was “another victim of Brooklyn’s MDC, an overcrowded, understaffed and neglected federal prison that is hell on earth.”
In January 2019, a prolonged power outage plunged the prison into crisis, leaving inmates in near-total darkness for a week and exposing them to the freezing temperatures that hit the northeast of the country. The incident led to a Justice Department investigation evaluating whether the Bureau of Prisons had “adequate contingency plans” to address inmates’ living conditions. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the prisoners, they were confined to their cells for days on end and forced to endure non-functioning toilets inside the cells and other unsanitary conditions.
The Bureau of Prisons reached an agreement in that lawsuit last summer, compensating 1,600 inmates a total of approximately $10 million for enduring freezing and inhumane conditions as a result of the blackout.
