Lockdowns, Violence, and “Barbaric Conditions” in a Federal Jail Known for its Famous Detainees

In February, a violent fight broke out in the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a federal jail in Brooklyn. It left people like Sean Chaney, who was released in January after spending 15 months in MDC, scrambling to learn the status of his friend and former cellmate, who was stabbed 18 times and hospitalized. At least nine other people sustained stab wounds.

“This is the type of stuff that goes on in MDC, because of the just inhumane conditions,” Chaney said. “This happens often. Whether it’s a riot, or it’s a few guys who just go at it with each other—there’s always going to be some type violence, because of the conditions going on in MDC, and the lack of concern for human life.”

Throughout his time in MDC, Chaney never knew when the facility was about to go on lockdown, trapping people nearly all day in tiny cells with a cellmate, for days or weeks on end. He saw time and time again how these conditions lead to violence.

“They don’t care about us, and they make dudes not care for themselves,” he said. “The dudes just start giving up…We know when we’re being treated badly. Dudes have emotions. They act on them, and the first people they act out on are the people that they’re around.”

MDC typically holds people who are awaiting trial for pending federal charges. Every so often, the jail emerges from obscurity into the public eye—usually when a high-profile person is detained there. In recent months, a flurry of news stories followed the arrival of suspected UnitedHealthcare assassin Luigi Mangione. Last September, the news focused on Sean Combs, the rapper known as Diddy, who is currently on trial for racketeering and sex trafficking charges. Before that, it was Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted of sex trafficking minors with Jeffrey Epstein;​​ the rapper R. Kelly, held there before his conviction on federal racketeering and sex trafficking; so-called “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who drew public rage for hiking drug prices and was subsequently convicted of securities fraud; and Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, who was convicted of fraud and related crimes.

But with the exception of its “celebrity prisoners,” MDC receives little attention, even relative to the city-run jail on Rikers Island. And for the many non-famous people stuck in MDC, unsanitary and unsafe conditions are facts of life. In lawsuits, people describe grotesque food and almost nonexistent medical care. In an unusual development—and a testament to MDC’s horrific conditions—some federal judges have been refusing to detain defendants pretrial if it means they will be held in the notorious jail.

As if the jail weren’t chaotic enough, in late June, the Trump administration began housing between 100 and 120 ICE detainees in the facility, to the alarm of advocates and attorneys. “The MDC has not been able to carry out its primary mission of housing pre-trial detainees safely,” Deirdre von Dornum, an attorney with the Federal Defenders of New York, told Solitary Watch. “It is inexplicable that BOP would take on 100 or more additional detainees at MDC when our judges have been regularly seeking to reduce the population.”

“An Absolute Tinderbox of an Environment”

Lawyers who represent people in MDC say lockdowns have become far more common since the COVID-19 pandemic. “The institution has gotten accustomed to running this way,” explained Andrew Dalack, another attorney with the Federal Defenders. 

“It really is like solitary confinement,” von Dornum told Solitary Watch. During lockdowns, visitation is suspended, and meals are passed into the cells on trays. During some lockdowns, von Dornum said, people are allowed out of their cells for just 45 minutes every three days, to shower and make a phone call. Yet they are often summoned back into their cells before reaching the front of the phone line.

In a November 2023 federal filing, one man documented his time on lockdown: Over the prior 245 days of incarceration, MDC had been locked down 137 days—more than 50 percent of the time. A BOP spokesperson disputes that lockdowns, which “can be initiated for a variety of issues,” have gotten more frequent since 2020.

“From lockdown to lockdown, it’s never going to be the same,” said Chaney. “The most consistent thing about MDC is the inconsistency… The reasons why we go on lockdown, how long it is… It’s very arbitrary. You don’t know what it’s going to be from day to day. We wake up and the doors don’t open today, that’s how you could find out. Or we come out, and they just recall us right back.”

As in many facilities throughout the BOP, people in MDC are typically double-celled with a cellmate. So during lockdowns, they are forced to spend hours and days trapped in a tiny cell with someone with whom they might not get along. “At least when the door is open, you can just get out of the cell, and everybody can kind of coexist,” Chaney said. But during lockdowns, “when you’re stuck in a cell with someone, it causes violence, causes problems, causes tension.”

He recalled one person who was assigned to live in a cell with the brother of the man he was accused of killing—a cell assignment that “almost got that man killed.” A BOP spokesperson denies that people with a history of problems are ever housed together in MDC, noting “that the safety of staff, inmates, and the public is a top priority.” However, incarcerated people have reported similarly dangerous cell assignments in other federal facilities in recent years.

Since 2020, 17 incarcerated people have died in the jail. In an August 2024 order, a federal judge summarized the violence in MDC, noting that each of the prior five months “was marred by instances of catastrophic violence at MDC, including two apparent homicides, two gruesome stabbings and an assault so severe that it resulted in a fractured eye socket for the victim. One knife attack was captured on a surveillance video producing images that are horrifying beyond words.”

“It used to be that I would tell people, ‘It’s safer than Rikers, but you don’t get as much freedom,’” said von Dornum. “It’s no longer safer than Rikers.”

“It’s a lack of care for our lives,” said Chaney. “And now when this assault happens, you’re going to blame us, as if you didn’t know what you were doing.” After a fight or assault, he noted, the people involved are typically sent to solitary confinement. But even with the perpetrators removed, he said, the rest of the unit often gets stuck on lockdown, brewing further resentment.

“It’s an absolute tinderbox of an environment,” said Dan McGuinness, an attorney who represents people in MDC. “And then these events are happening—which are horrible, violent events—and then everyone shuts down again. So they’re in this vicious cycle, where things are just getting worse and worse.”

“Unconscionable” Conditions

During Chaney’s time in MDC, he says, the water coming into his cell sink was often brown. For a long time, hot water on his unit wasn’t working, so people were unable to heat up commissary food. In 2024, the Federal Defenders collected ten different accounts of people finding maggots in their meat or beans. And Spectrum News 1 obtained videos from people incarcerated in MDC, which showed “cockroaches on the food, broken light fixtures and mold in the shower.”

Even when not on lockdown, Chaney said, they were allowed just one visit a month. When he was released last January, there were only two working showers on his 100-person unit. And although everyone was issued a tablet, they had to share just one working charger. 

“Things are happening as a result of that,” he said. “People want to get their tablet charged, so they take other people’s tablets off. That causes things. Instead of just giving us chargers, they just exacerbate the problems.” The BOP denies these allegations.

Although the jail has held more than 1,600 people at a time in recent years, as of January, it employed just two medical doctors and one physician, contributing to serious issues accessing medical care. 

“We receive constant reports of people having seizures, trying to kill themselves, other truly emergent situations, heart attacks, and the call button doesn’t work,” said von Dornum. “The call buttons have now been non-functional for four years… So everyone’s banging on the cell doors, but there are no officers on the unit because they’re understaffed.” 

This happened in June 2024, when a diabetic man lost consciousness in his cell, according to court records. There were no correctional officers working on the unit at the time, and the panic button was broken. A fellow incarcerated man spent the night placing cold towels on the sick man’s head to keep him conscious, and feeding him sweets to raise his blood sugar. The BOP says MDC’s call buttons are working.

MDC staff have a history of ignoring court orders demanding medical treatment. In one 2023 case, a federal judge ordered MDC to transfer someone with a MRSA infection to a medical facility. After repeatedly defying the orders, staff transferred the man to solitary confinement by “mistake.” And in May 2024, U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall berated MDC staff for failing to give a man his medication following an emergency appendectomy, and then lying about it. She noted that this was “not an anomaly,” and stated: “At a certain point the MDC is going to have to understand that the judges of this court are no longer going to tolerate the mismanagement of the medical care of the defendants that are in their charge.”

Drugs and homemade weapons are rampant. While prisons and jails tend to blame contraband on visitors, some MDC officers have been caught smuggling it into the facility. Dalack noted that when the jail halted all visitation, including legal visits, for several months during the COVID-19 pandemic, contraband continued to make its way inside.

Lockdowns and inhumane conditions also impact incarcerated people’s ability to prepare for their legal cases—many of whom are facing serious prison time. Lawyers describe waiting two to three hours just to meet with clients, or even being turned away without seeing their client at all. In 2019, the Federal Defenders brought an ongoing lawsuit against the BOP, over their clients’ lack of legal access in MDC. The parties have been in mediation since 2020.

Von Dornum said lockdowns “make it impossible for them to review their own discovery, which means they can’t then talk to us about their discovery, or assist in their defense. It makes it impossible for them to go to the law library to do legal research.” It’s also hard for people to focus on their cases when they have been denied contact with their loved ones.

“When you actually see your client, all they want to talk about is how terrible their conditions are,” added Dalack. “How little sleep they’re getting, how their requests for medical attention go unheeded.” This leaves little time to discuss their actual case.

Abysmal conditions at MDC date back years. In 2016, the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ) investigated the “unconscionable” conditions in which MDC was holding 161 women in two large, windowless rooms. Their food was often spoiled and moldy, and access to gynecological and other medical care was extremely insufficient. They were never allowed outside for exercise.

And during a polar vortex in early 2019, an electrical fire caused a week-long blackout in the facility, leaving many people without access to their medications. One person wrote that during the blackout, “I suffered from: insomnia, asthma-related coughing and chest pain and tightness that were intensified by the cold, dizziness and headaches, and severe stress, fear, and mental health symptoms that caused me to swallow razor blades.” Another wrote: “There were nights that I was so cold that I feared that if I fell asleep that I would not wake up.” In a 2023 settlement, the government agreed to pay $17,500 each to 69 people whose medical conditions went untreated in MDC during the blackout, as well as $8,750 each to an additional 945 people who endured the crisis.

Judges Refuse to Send People to “Barbaric” Jail

Some federal judges have begun taking the unusual step of refusing to send people to MDC.

In January 2024, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman heard the case of a 70-year-old defendant awaiting sentencing for drug distribution. Although Furman noted that federal law would mandate pre-trial jailing, he used a loophole allowing judicial discretion for “exceptional reasons”—citing the inhumane conditions the man would face if sent to MDC to await trial.

In a scathing ruling, Furman noted that recent court dockets “have been filled with cases in which defendants complain about near-perpetual lockdowns (no longer explained by COVID-19), dreadful conditions, and lengthy delays in getting medical care” at MDC. He added: “It has gotten to the point that it is routine for judges…to give reduced sentences to defendants based on the conditions of confinement in the MDC.”

Furman’s ruling noted that “the reason most often given for many, if not all, of these problems is understaffing.” Just 55 percent of correctional officer roles were filled in January 2024; the BOP says a hiring push improved this rate to 70 percent by September. But in his decision, Furman suggested another strategy: “The only other way to mitigate the ongoing tragedy is to improve the ratio of correctional officers to prisoners by reducing—or at least not adding to—the prisoner population.”

U.S. District Judge Judge Gary R. Brown cited similar concerns several months later, when he sentenced a defendant to nine months incarceration—but promised to vacate the sentence if the BOP sent him to MDC. Brown cited MDC’s “dangerous, barbaric conditions,” where “chaos reigns, along with uncontrolled violence.” Several years earlier, in 2020, another judge noted that a defendant had been subjected to conditions in MDC “as disgusting, inhuman as anything I’ve heard about any Colombian prison… I am convinced that no good would be served by keeping you incarcerated for one minute more than I am required to do by law.”

“All the judges recognize that this is inhumane and intolerable,” said McGuinness. “These guys in the MDC are going through hell.”

“It can’t be overemphasized that prosecutors should be seeking detention in far fewer cases, and judges should be putting far fewer people at the MDC, unless there’s some overriding and urgent public safety or flight risk concern,” said Dalack.

Yet he cautioned that individual rulings are not enough. “What we really need is some meaningful, institutional reform that can really only come from the political branches,” Dalack said. “Individual judges can do more, and they can do a lot, but they can only do so much.”

But under Trump, federal prison and jail reform seems unlikely. In May, New York Rep. Dan Goldman, whose district includes the jail, condemned Trump and his Republican colleagues for funding cuts that he said will only worsen the crisis in MDC and other federal facilities, including canceling the collective bargaining agreement for federal correctional officers and eliminating officers’ retention bonuses. And the more recent decision to throw ICE detainees into the mix will almost certainly exacerbate the already deadly conditions in the federal jail. 

“MDC was so consistent with the bad treatment,” said Chaney. “It’s not just one thing. It’s the totality of everything put together that makes everything so unbearable and inhumane.”