Status Operational Phone +1 212-836-6300 | Population 732 Opened 1975 | |
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Location Manhattan, New York City Security class Administrative facility Managed by Federal Bureau of Prisons Address 150 Park Row, New York, NY 10007, USA | ||
The Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York (MCC New York) is a United States federal administrative prison in Manhattan, New York which holds male and female prisoners of all security levels. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.
Contents
Most prisoners held at MCC New York have pending cases in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. MCC New York also holds prisoners serving brief sentences.
The Los Angeles Times stated that the prison is often referred to as the "Guantanamo of New York", and The New York Times stated that its administrative segregation units had severe security measures.
History
Opened in 1975, MCC New York was the first high-rise facility to be used by the Bureau of Prisons. Prisoners are assigned to ten separate, self-contained housing units, resulting in little movement within the facility. As of 2002 it has been widely reported that MCC New York is severely overcrowded.
Numerous high-profile individuals have been held at MCC New York during court proceedings, including Gambino crime family Bosses John Gotti and Jackie D'Amico, drug kingpin Frank Lucas, Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff, terrorists Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, and weapons trafficker Viktor Bout. In January 2017, after being extradited to the United States, Mexican drug lord Joaquín "el Chapo" Guzmán is housed in the facility.
Facility
In an article published on April 5, 2011, Jim Dwyer of the New York Times described the experience of an inmate being transferred from the facility to the federal court across the street: A prisoner going to court from the Metropolitan Correctional Center is presented to federal marshals in the basement of the building. Shackled at the ankles, chained at the waist and cuffed at the hands, the prisoner hop-marches through a tunnel nearly 40 feet (12 meters) below the street. The prisoner and escorts go through channels, or corridors, with electronic doors at each end. These are controlled remotely by officers who watch the journey through cameras. More prominent prisoners, who need to be segregated from the general prison population, are housed in the 10-South wing, which is noted for severely confining conditions.
During this passage from jail to court, no one lays eyes on the prisoner except the marshals and the people in the surveillance stations. Once they have reached the north end of the tunnel, they wait for the prisoner elevator. Inside is a locked cage that the prisoner stands in for the ride up to the courthouse cells.