NEW YORK — The federal Bureau of Prisons says it has increased staffing in recent months to make up for staggering shortfalls at the troubled New York City jail where Sean “Diddy” Combs is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty Tuesday to sex trafficking charges.
The agency’s push to fix the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn comes as detainees, advocates and judges have continued to raise alarms about “dangerous, barbaric conditions,” rampant violence and multiple deaths. Some judges have refused to send people to the jail, the only federal lockup in the nation’s biggest city.
Combs’ lawyers are pushing to have him moved to a jail in New Jersey, arguing that the Brooklyn jail, known as MDC Brooklyn, is unfit for pretrial detention. Combs, 54, is being kept in the facility’s special housing unit, confined to his cell up to 23 hours a day with around-the-clock monitoring. His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said that’s routine for high-profile new arrivals.
MDC Brooklyn is getting needed attention thanks to a group of senior Bureau of Prisons officials known as the Urgent Action Team, which is focusing on bringing the facility back to adequate staffing levels and ensuring it is in good repair.
The agency said Friday that it has increased staffing at the jail by about 20%, bringing its total number of employees to 469. Even so, there are still 157 vacant positions. The new hires include correctional officers and medical staff. Before the surge, the facility was operating at about 55% of full staffing, according to court filings.
At the same time, the facility’s inmate population has dropped from about 1,600 at the start of the year to about 1,200 as of Friday.
A senior Bureau of Prisons official told The Associated Press that members of the Urgent Action Team have made repeated visits to MDC Brooklyn and meet weekly to address issues at the jail. Top agency leaders are giving the jail “sustained attention” and “sustained leadership focus” to mitigate issues at the lockup, the official said.
The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing review and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
In addition to hiring, the Bureau of Prisons says it has been tackling a substantial maintenance backlog at the Brooklyn jail. Over four weeks in the spring, agency workers completed more than 800 work orders for repair and infrastructure improvements. They included electrical and plumbing upgrades and repairs to food service and heating and air conditioning systems.
MDC Brooklyn has been plagued by problems since it opened in the 1990s. Part of the facility, near the waterfront in the borough’s Sunset Park neighborhood, is a century-old former Navy warehouse. The Bureau of Prisons closed its other New York City jail, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in 2021 after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide there shone a spotlight on lax security, crumbling infrastructure and dangerous, squalid conditions.
MDC Brooklyn detainees have long complained about frequent violence, horrific conditions, severe staffing shortages and the widespread smuggling of drugs and other contraband, some of it facilitated by employees. At the same time, they say they’ve been subject to frequent lockdowns during which they’ve been barred from leaving their cells for visits, calls, showers or exercise.
MDC Brooklyn isn’t the only federal prison facility beset by staffing and other problems.
The Bureau of Prisons has struggled to retain correctional officers at its prisons and jails across the U.S. - but the problem has been even more pronounced in New York City, in part because of city’s high cost of living and starting salaries that are far lower than other law enforcement agencies.
In the last few years, MDC Brooklyn officers have been forced to work repeated overtime shifts because of staffing shortages, raising safety concerns. To stanch the departure of experience staff, the agency has increased retention bonuses to hike salaries for workers at the Brooklyn jail.
Still, problems have persisted. At least six MDC Brooklyn staff members have been charged with crimes in the last five years. Some were accused of accepting bribes or providing contraband to inmates such as drugs, cigarettes, and cellphones, according to an AP analysis of agency-related arrests.
In the last few months, inmates have also claimed that food served at the jail contained maggots. The senior Bureau of Prisons official who spoke to the AP about the Urgent Action Team’s work said all food at the jail was evaluated after that claim and no maggots were found. An assistant warden also taste tests meals before they are served, the official said.
The agency’s focus on fixing MDC Brooklyn comes amid increase scrutiny from Congress and a new law overhauling oversight of the beleaguered federal prison system. Combs’ detention at MDC Brooklyn has only further galvanized public interest.
An ongoing AP investigation has uncovered 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 said it was closing its women’s prison in Dublin, California, known as the “rape club,” giving up on attempts to reform the facility after an AP investigation exposed staff-on-inmate sexual abuse.
In July, President Joe Biden signed a law establishing a new oversight paradigm for the Bureau of Prisons, including an independent ombudsman to field and investigate complaints and risk-based inspections by the Justice Department’s inspector general of all 122 federal prison facilities.
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