Federal prison officials say they’ve upped staffing levels and increased correction officer wages following a raft of complaints and violent incidents at the notorious MDC Brooklyn jail.
The jail, which currently houses rap star Sean “Diddy” Combs as he awaits trial for sex trafficking, has long been decried for its hellish conditions by judges, defense attorneys and inmates. Earlier this year, two inmates were stabbed to death just six weeks apart.
Last week, the federal Bureau of Prisons announced it had made several changes at the jail, many of them focusing on a severe staffing shortage there, following up on an announcement in August by the bureau’s director, Colette Peters, that she’d tasked an “urgent action team” to MDC Brooklyn.
Those changes include a significant spike in correction officer pay, including a more than $14,000 recruiting bonus upon hire, and “retention incentives” of 35% to keep them on staff.
“Urgent action on the notoriously terrible conditions at MDC Brooklyn is long overdue,” said Deirdre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders. “Until the facility proves that it is able to provide constitutionally adequate care to defendants, our clients should not be detained there.”
Court filings last November showed that only 200 of 301 correction officer positions were filled at the MDC Brooklyn, about 66% — and that rate was down to 55% in January — but the BOP said Thursday the jail has now filled 70% of its correction officer positions.
MDC Brooklyn has also hired more medical staffers, filling 90% of its open positions compared with 69% percent in January.
“Notably, in January, MDC Brooklyn had one nurse on staff. It now employs six nurses on staff,” BOP officials wrote in a Thursday “Urgent Action Team Fact Sheet.”
The inmate count has also dropped from about 1,580 in January to roughly 1,220 in September, BOP officials wrote.
Inmates are also being offered telehealth services, while staff went cell to cell over the spring to make repairs, officials said.
“The team’s work is ongoing, but it has already increased permanent staffing at the institution … addressed over 700 backlogged maintenance requests, and applied a continued focus on the issues raised in two recent judicial decisions,” said BOP spokesman Donald Murphy.
Murphy didn’t specify which judicial decisions, but judges have repeatedly voiced concerns over conditions at the jail. In January, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Jesse Furman said conditions at the Sunset Park jail were so “dreadful,” and the lockup so short-staffed, that he wouldn’t send a 70-year-old drug dealer there as he awaited sentencing.
And last month, Long Island Federal Court Judge Gary Brown issued a similar decision, stating he’d vacate a 75-year-old tax scammer’s nine-month sentence and give him house arrest instead if he’s sent to MDC Brooklyn.
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