The Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC Brooklyn), a federal jail located in Sunset Park, has been in the news because of high-profile cases involving Diddy and alleged United Healthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione who are being held there.

But for years, everyday people at MDC have experienced horrendous and inhumane conditions. The news hardly covers the atrocities they endure. The conditions were described as “dangerous” and “barbaric” by a federal court judge who condemned the facility, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced that MDC no longer accepts new people serving sentences. While it has been deemed too dangerous for people serving sentences, over 1,100 people are still being held at MDC for pretrial detention.

We are a group organizing around conditions at MDC Brooklyn. Some of us have been incarcerated at MDC, some of us have loved ones inside, some of us have lost loved ones to corrections officer (C.O.) violence (Justice for Jamel Floyd), and some of us live in the neighborhood. We connect with people inside the facility, their loved ones, and the broader community to share stories and build power.

Join us in making these demands to stand with people inside who are trying to survive:

1. People must have access to nutritious, good quality food at all times, including during visits. MDC must accommodate people's allergies and dietary restrictions.

2. People must receive appropriate healthcare, including mental AND physical evaluation and treatment.

3. End the lockdowns.

4. MDC must allow regular, accessible visitations without arbitrary and unjust restrictions, and must re-open the children’s room.

5. The facility must maintain habitable conditions including appropriate temperatures as well as sanitary, properly functioning plumbing.

READ MORE ABOUT OUR DEMANDS:

1. People must have access to nutritious, good quality food at all times, including during visits. MDC must accommodate people's allergies and dietary restrictions.

• MDC regularly serves food that is rotten, moldy, or has bugs in it. Any decent food is served in portions that are way too small to meet nutritional needs. In the visitation area, the vending machines are never well-stocked and the only working microwave is always dirty.

2. People must receive appropriate healthcare, including mental AND physical evaluation and treatment.

• Those inside are routinely deprived of medical and dental care, including essentials such as glasses and their prescription medications. Medical staff inside must honor already existing medical treatments and prescriptions. Solitary confinement cannot be used as treatment.

A loved one inside has not received any dental care, despite requesting it for five years.

3. End the lockdowns.

• The facility is on “lockdown” more often than not, with people kept in conditions of extreme confinement without access to phone calls, showers, and physical movement/recreation for days at a time. During a 6-day lockdown in November 2024, people were confined in their cells for up to 23 hours per day.

• MDC uses any possible excuse to call for lockdowns—for example, when they are short staffed. Lockdowns are used to control, torture, punish, and repress the people inside.

• Lockdowns intensify the already horrible conditions and act as a pressure cooker for conflict. During a lockdown everyone rushes to call their loved one, take a shower, or prepare food in the same fifteen minute window. MDC then uses the ensuing conflicts to justify future and continuous lockdowns.

4. MDC must allow regular, accessible visitations without arbitrary and unjust restrictions, and must re-open the children’s room.

• MDC has restricted visitation to “immediate” family members so that people inside have to make a “special request” to see anyone else—this includes cousins, girlfriends, and siblings who have a different last name.

Someone was not able to visit their partner at MDC because they came without their child, who is considered the only “immediate” family member of the person inside.

• Visitors are often denied because of a dress code that is enforced on the whims of the C.O. on duty. People can get turned away for having holes in their clothes or wearing open-toed shoes or hoodies.

Someone was denied a visit because of his clothing but was not given any further instruction, even though he came from out of state to visit his brother.

• MDC closed the children's room in the visitation area, making it incredibly difficult for children, particularly young children and children with disabilities, to visit their loved ones inside. Children are expected to follow the restrictive adult visiting rules, such as sitting the whole time, and not touching or hugging the person they are visiting.

5. The facility must maintain habitable conditions including appropriate temperatures as well as sanitary, properly functioning plumbing.

• During past winters, people have been left in freezing conditions. Other times, the air conditioning is intolerably cold.

• Sometimes the water has come out brown. When the water gets shut off, people inside have been given one bottle for the whole day to use for both drinking and hygiene.

We are fighting for these immediate demands to ensure the survival, health, and well-being of people locked up inside. We know, however, that the real solution is to shut down MDC and free everyone held at the facility. While MDC may have particularly bad conditions, all prisons aim to control and repress People of Color and working class people. Prisons do not rehabilitate and uplift; they punish and disempower. As we fight for the needs, dignity, and livelihood of people currently locked up, we will continue to fight for a world without jails, prisons, and policing.