The Metropolitan correctional center is under fire in the wake of Epstein’s death – and critics say urgent change is needed

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The New York Metropolitan correctional center sits on a corner in downtown Manhattan, eerily quiet given its location between the financial district and Chinatown.

At the junction of Pearl Street and Park Row, the sound of trucks whizzing by and cars honking at pedestrians remains strangely absent. The headquarters of the New York police department is next door and surrounding roads have been closed since 9/11.

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Pedestrians and cyclists are permitted to walk the perimeter of the prison, with the exception of its front entrance. Guard houses are dotted round the building. Tourists heading to the Brooklyn Bridge, bankers riding bikes and parents pushing children in strollers pass by as though passing any other government building. Barbed wire and frosted windows give the only clues to its purpose.

The MCC has held high-profile inmates but it was largely unknown to the public until it became the place where Jeffrey Epstein was found dead last weekend, more than a month after his arrest on federal sex trafficking charges. The official results of an autopsy showed Epstein killed himself, the New York medical examiner said on Friday.

Epstein’s death raised questions about how such a high-profile suspect could die under the care of the federal government. The Department of Justice has opened investigations but conspiracy theories have flourished.

Criminal justice advocates argue the focus on problems at the prison is long overdue.

“The fact that the MCC has problems is a secret to no one who is familiar with practice in this district,” said David Patton, executive director of Federal Defenders of New York, a nonprofit that represents clients who cannot afford a lawyer.

The MCC has held terrorists, mobsters and white-collar criminals – Bernie Madoff, mafia boss John Gotti and Donald Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort among them. But the vast majority of its prisoners are held on obscure charges.

When the building opened in 1975, the New York Times reported on its “advanced – and humane – prison design” that emphasized privacy and security. Larry Taylor, the warden, said it represented a “leap of 200 years”. Times have changed. The building was designed for 480 inmates. It is now home to more than 760.

“The plumbing there is horrible,” said Andrew Laufer, a lawyer who has represented clients at the MCC. “You have prisoners going to the bathroom in the shower stalls. You have vermin, you have the rats, you have the roaches, you have a lot of just the day-to-day stuff that’s just horrible.

“[Prisons are] tough places to be, places that you don’t want to be. But they should have a minimum standard that they should live up to.”

In an exposé, former inmates told the Gothamist website rats were a huge problem. One said he had “found rats in his bed and seen rats crawling on inmates while they slept”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeffrey Epstein killed himself a month after being charged with sex trafficking. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

A few months ago, Patton said, a plumbing problem caused raw sewage to spill into the women’s unit. Prisoners were required to clean it up but were not given adequate protective gear.

Lawyers have found that clients held at MCC receive delayed access to medical care. Joshua Datel, who has worked with those held in the prison since the 1980s, said one recent client broke a foot but had to wait three weeks to see a specialist doctor.

“There’s a lack of standards of care for inmates,” Dratel said. “It’s a difficult place for inmates, it’s a difficult place for staff, it’s a difficult place for us [lawyers] for us to visit.”

Lawyers often have to wait as many as two hours to see a client, he added, because of complications such as elevators breaking down.

Mental health support is nearly nonexistent and while the prison dispenses medications, Patton said, it does so sporadically. According to the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), there were 19 suicide attempts between 2015 and 2018. Prior to Epstein’s death, the last inmate suicide at the MCC was in 2006.

The BOP is the branch of the DoJ that operates the MCC and 121 other US prisons. The federal prison system has been going through a staffing crisis after then attorney general Jeff Sessions instituted a hiring freeze in 2017.

According to a Marshall Project report, the freeze shrank the workforce at twice the rate of the declining prison population. Attorney general William Barr lifted the freeze in April but the BOP has been playing catch-up.

Union officials who represent federal prison workers said staffing shortages not only affect inmates but have a profound impact on those who guard them.

At the MCC, which one union official said is operating with 70% of correctional officers needed, overtime is often mandated and teachers and nurses are asked to serve as correctional officers.

“Physically and mentally [correctional officers] get tired,” said Darrell Palmer, north-east regional vice-president for the council of local prison unions. “They can’t get home to their families. If you have a son or daughter who has a sporting event, and you’re supposed to get off at 4pm, you could be told to stay and work 16 hours.

“If you live an hour away, and you have to drive home at around 1am, then you turn around and come back on five hours of sleep. You get worn down as the week goes on.”

Staffing shortages create safety problems for staff and inmates. Reports from officials said guards supposed to check on Epstein fell asleep. Union officials said guards had been working extreme overtime.

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Criminal justice advocates and union officials say problems at the MCC are seen across the system. Epstein’s death, they say, is the canary in the coalmine.

Criminal justice reform has gained rare bipartisan support in Congress. In December, a bill gave judges more discretion in sentencing some offenders and boosted prisoner rehabilitation.

In response to Epstein’s death, Democratic and Republican leaders on the House judiciary committee sent a letter to BOP acting director Hugh Hurwitz, saying the incident “demonstrates severe miscarriages of or deficiencies in inmate protocol and has allowed the deceased to ultimately evade facing justice”.

The DoJ reassigned the MCC warden and placed on leave two guards assigned to watch Epstein. It took the death of a “rich, white person for that to happen, for those measures to be taken,” Dratel said.

“Those of us who operate in this system on a daily basis have been crying in the wilderness about this, that it has not been running properly for a significant period of time.

“It shouldn’t have to come to this.”