MCC Federal Prison
The deuce of clubs of the system
On one of many visits to see the pretrial officer who supervised me while I went through “the process,” we reviewed all the different local facilities to which I might be designated if in fact, the judge decided I should be locked up.
There was Otisville, a 117-prisoner camp that houses mostly white-collar offenders the likes of Michael Cohen.
There was Fort Dix in New Jersey, a huge facility right next to the well-known Air Force base. It boasts acres of outdoor space and prison jobs on the base itself.
Danbury, in Connecticut, was another white-collar prison camp where a “civilized” inmate would be lucky to be designated. It was also the location where “Orange Is the New Black” was filmed.
MDC in Brooklyn, right on the water in Sunset Park, was a place my officer did not recommend. He said it was grim, confined, and depressing. Just visiting the prison put him in a dark mood.
Sympathetic to my plight (Robert and I actually liked each other and spent way more time in each other’s presence than we needed to), my officer ended the conversation with “I have to get back to the real world” as he shook his head in a sad moment realizing that the person whose company he enjoyed might very well spend some significant time locked up with animals.
His sympathy notwithstanding, the moment the designation letter arrived in my snail mailbox was a somewhat confusing and tense one. The correspondence said I’d be serving my year at Metropolitan Correctional Center on 150 Park Row, NY, NY.
My initial reaction was one of “MCC? What the fuck is that? There’s actually a federal prison on Manhattan Island? How come Robert didn’t even mention the place? This doesn’t sound good!”
With trepidation, I Googled the institution. And it wasn’t but a few seconds before my blood ran cold. “The Guantanamo Bay of New York City” said the article’s headline. Uh oh! Right away, I knew I was going to a bad facility. Apparently, I’d drawn the shittiest prison in the system.
MCC is classified as an administrative facility. According to the BOP, “administrative facilities are institutions with special missions, such as the detention of pretrial offenders; the treatment of inmates with serious or chronic medical problems; or the containment of extremely dangerous, violent, or escape-prone inmates.”
By me, MCC’s “special mission” was to torture me with a bureaucracy that was so incompetent, that I’d have pulled every hair out of my head in frustration if I’d had any to pull out. To say that both the incompetence of the system, and the incompetents who bungled their way through it boggled the mind, would be a severe understatement. The poor conditions, huge roaches, endless rodent infestations, and lack of any sunlight were one thing. But the idiots who ran the place were quite another.
Exactly how I drew the lowest card in the deck when all the oddsmakers figured as a geriatric white-collar first-time offender, I’d be going to a civilized camp, I can only speculate. But I have a general idea.
For starters, I think it had something to do with my lawyers’ incompetence. Rather than immediately request a designation from the judge, they suggested we make a motion for reconsideration after Hizzoner sentenced me to a year and a day.
But when I found out that motion would be entered with the same judge — and that it would cost me several thousand more dollars — and more than likely net the same result (or even worse if the judge got annoyed), I told my boys to forget it. I’d eat the year.
Whatever…while we ruminated that course of action, my lawyers didn’t immediately honor my request to suggest to the judge that I go to Otisville or Danbury. And by the time they finally got around to making any requests concerning my designation, that ship had pretty much sailed.
Without any timely plaintive cries forthcoming, the judge (and Fed) were more or less free to put me in the most convenient location — which for the State and Fed — was MCC.
At the very end of the five-and-a-half-year federal “process,” I was arrested by the State of New York on a conspiracy to promote prostitution charge. In fact, the State had been reading my blog for ten years and was biding its time bringing charges against me until the time was right. Five years into my federal nightmare, they lowered the boom.
Whether the case was solid (which I didn’t think it was) or not was immaterial. I was going to have to appear in state court at least a couple of times while I was locked up in a federal facility. As it was described to me, the paperwork involved in moving a federal inmate from his designated federal facility to a state court for even one appearance was prodigious.
And of course, it would be beneficial to both parties (State and Fed) to have that inmate housed at a facility located just a few hundred yards from the state court. That facility was MCC which in fact, is just spitting distance from 100 Centre Street.
There were more factors that got me designated to MCC as well. The inhabitants of that prison were comprised equally of locals who’d been “violated” (thrown back in prison for violating the conditions of their probation), inmates who’d been sent there from other facilities as a punishment for bad behavior, prisoners at the very end of a long sentence who were moved to a lower classification for their last year or two, and finally, local offenders with short sentences (like 1 to 3 years). As you can see, I fit the bill on a few criteria. Local? Check. Short timer? Check. State charge? Check. So for better or worse, MCC it was. Just my luck. Now to the facility itself.
Of MCC’s 775 inmates, only 10% were actually sentenced prisoners. The other 90% were pretrial inmates. Which means they were either remanded or unable to make bail. And so there they stayed until such time as they were sentenced — which in the federal system can be years. There were many pretrial offenders I met who’d been locked up at MCC for a long time while awaiting trials and/or sentencing.
Sentenced inmates were housed in a unit called “cadre.” Presumably, we were the elite of the prison — the more civilized of the crew (sentenced inmates with an “out date” are more likely to avoid violence as they know their “out date,” and don’t want to delay their release by getting into trouble).
In theory, we were the guys who did all the work around the prison, though that was more theoretical than actual. There just weren’t enough of us to perform all the jobs. So the authorities had pretrial guys laboring as well.
When opened in 1975, MCC was the BOP’s first high-rise prison — and a model in the system. From all accounts, the facility was a modern paragon of what a prison should be. The facility was clean and orderly. The food was excellent (relatively), and according to one guard, half of the 30 or so female inmates were of strip club caliber visually.
But the MCC of today is a far cry from and just a shadow of the original institution. Originally designed to house 443 inmates, the prison now hosts 775 offenders in an obviously overcrowded, run-down, and roach and rodent-ridden facility.
The two-man cells at MCC were clearly designed to house a single inmate. All one has to do is look at the bunk beds to figure that out. There is no vertical bar preventing the resident of the upper bunk from rolling over in his sleep and crashing to the floor.
And the configuration lacks a ladder with which to ascend to that upper bunk. Essentially, it would appear that when the prison authorities decided to double up prisoners, they simply welded one bed on top of another and effectively (or not so effectively), turned two single beds into bunk beds.
The federal government has guidelines for exactly how many square feet of living space it must provide an incarcerated individual. If the 70 square feet required of two-man cells has been provided for the two individuals who live in an MCC cell, the BOP has cleared that hurdle by maybe a square inch.
I calculated that in fact, we had 36 square feet of open space to live in one of those cells after subtracting the square footage under the bed, lockers, and mini desk. And that included the floor space under the right-out-in-the-open toilet. Two 300-pounders in a cell (which wasn’t all that uncommon) was a tight squeeze. I can tell you that!
Most of the units at MCC were comprised of six different tiers, with four two-man cells on one side, and four on the other. In the corner was a lone but private shower stall. Sixteen inmates shared one shower. And there were two tables in a small but adequate common tier area for 8 of the 16 inmates to eat or play cards, checkers, uno, scrabble, poker, or whatever. Contestants could get loud and animated at these games (especially poker).
There was a larger central area (to all inmates) where we could watch 5 different televisions (two in Spanish) four of which could only be heard through the headphones on a prison radio available for purchase at an inflated cost on commissary. And a small and almost laughable gym and an area in which some units (not all) had an ice machine, hot water dispenser, and two microwaves to heat specially-concocted (of which there was a lot) prison cuisine cooked with food bought on commissary provided some creature comforts.
Along the walls of the main area were six telephones (not booths). And we had five computers inmates could use to communicate with the outside world via a system called TRULINCS, an antiquated email program available for 5 cents per minute. Most inmates (not me because I used the internet in the commission of my crime) could access the system.
But to call those computers modern would be a stretch. You couldn’t copy and paste with them. Nor word process. So any notion that an inmate might want to write a memoir, or article, or anything but a simple email was out of the question.
So even though my favorite pretrial officer assured me that I could write my way through prison, the only way that could happen would be if I wrote by hand. And with my handwriting, that wasn’t going to happen. (Although it did once.)
When Paul Manafort became my celly, I called a friend who was an editor at the Daily Beast to tell him about my good fortune. Manafort was a big story at the time and Harry immediately commissioned me to write a piece for the website. Exactly how I would do that and convey its content was in question. It didn’t matter because we never got to that point.
With extreme effort, I did write the piece on pad and paper — hardly an easy job for somebody who’d spent years writing thousands of blog pages on a computer. With the help of musical signs in the text (da segno and coda), I managed to edit down a usable piece and was actually excited about the project.
But then I began to ponder exactly how the prison officials could exact their revenge once the article came out. And I grew more apprehensive. I really did not want to go to the SHU behind a $400 payday.
Rather than completely pussy out, I asked the officer in charge of the kitchen (with whom I was friendly) how he thought I should handle the situation. He suggested I run it by the warden.
So the next “mainline day” (prison officials came to our unit and let the inmates air their grievances for 30 minutes), I presented the warden with a plan to submit the text beforehand so he’d know I wasn’t maligning his facility. “Don’t do it. You’ll be out soon enough,” I was summarily warned. A word to the wise was sufficient. I never submitted the story.
“Soon enough” in this case would be 5 months, which for a time-sensitive piece like mine was a story killer. I phoned Harry with the bad news. And rather than submit the piece, I simply gave him my observations over the phone. In the end, it worked out because I did get to write for the Beast once I was released.
One deadly serious flaw in the manner MCC was run reared its ugly head via an unparalleled public relations nightmare: JEFFREY EPSTEINS’S suicide!
The problem was that the worst of the worst inmates — and those simply seeking protective custody from the rabble — were housed in the same unit. Protective custody inmates and disciplinary problems are not always housed together. But they are at MCC in a unit called the SHU (Special Housing Unit).
This presents a problem because the PC guys aren’t badly behaved. They’re just scared and don’t want to mingle with dangerous elements. So what happens at MCC? The protective custody guys end up with the animals, who are loud, ignorant, and relentless in their dysfunction.
I knew a fellow inmate companion who requested protective custody because he was getting his ass kicked in general population owing to his charge (child molestation).
A week in the SHU was enough. He said he was going crazy in protective custody and decided to return to general population. Getting his rear beat was preferable to being kept up all night by screaming lunatics.
I had and still harbor a theory that the reason Jeffrey Epstein was driven to suicide had something to do with the protective custody inmates getting housed with the reprobates. Just a theory mind you. But I can’t imagine Jeffrey liked life in the SHU. That’s a given. Jeffrey never actually shared his feelings about getting housed in the SHU with me. But living in the SHU certainly didn’t help his state of mind. Of that you can be sure.
Among other facets of prison life which seem to fascinate people who’ve never experienced it, is the prison menu. “How’s the food?” is a question asked of me on more than one occasion since I’ve come home.
For 5 years before entering MCC, I was an almost daily volunteer and thus, was and am no stranger to eating shelter food. As a bachelor who really doesn’t cook all that expertly, I saw no need to prepare food or eat out when there were cooked meals all around me.
Of course, the food wasn’t of Lutece quality — but that barely mattered. The point is…a foodie I am not. So while some of the offerings were nasty, I mostly didn’t have a problem with MCC mainline food.
At 6 AM or so (on weekdays) and 7 AM (weekends), inmates were released from lockdown for breakfast. I don’t think I missed one breakfast in 311 days locked up. That was for two reasons. First, I wanted out of the cell and into the shower. And second, I wanted to eat — and actually kind of liked breakfast.
We’d get a big bowl of cereal (which was decent bran most of the time — though not always), fresh fruit (and seconds and thirds if we wanted), fat-free milk (ugh), and pastry in the form of (hopefully) coffee cake or donuts.
The coffee cake was the bomb because it had a brown sugar crust on top. If we were lucky enough to get the good bran, coffee cake, and bananas, I would slice the banana into the cereal, crush the coffee cake into the banana and cereal combo — and then smother it all with milk. Yum!
In federal prison (though not at Rikers), there is no real sugar. That’s to prevent prisoners from brewing hooch (which they did anyway). If you don’t like fake sugar (which I abhor) that brown sugar on the coffee cake was a decent alternative.
Lunch, which was served at 11 AM, consisted of (to the best of my recollection) chicken patties on Tuesday, soy/beef burgers on Wednesday, dark meat chicken quarters on Thursday, and fish filets on Friday. There was always a side of some sort of potatoes, ranging from IDA brand tater tots to actual mashed potatoes with the skins intact (often very good), and some horrible canned vegetables it was my job to open down in the kitchen. I knew it was off-brand shit — and I almost never ate it.
Somehow, dinner was less memorable (at least for me). There could be meatloaf. Or some faux lasagna. Or chicken fried rice which bore little resemblance to the real thing. Or tacos with greasy beef. Swedish meatballs was one of the least favorite meals with most of the inmates. The Federal BOP has a national menu to which we more or less stuck in the kitchen.
Many inmates eschewed mainline food in favor of commissary concoctions. Or they augmented mainline food with stuff they bought and/or cooked from commissary. With no sex in the offing, prisoners often sublimated with way too much food and/or a lot of working out. So what you’d often see at MCC were prisoners with huge biceps and pot bellies. In fact, I never saw such a percentage of men who looked like they could bench press 300 pounds by bouncing the bar off their bellies and into the air.
Owing to its urban location, MCC suffered a unique condition that might have been mitigated with some thought, but at its core was at least somewhat beyond the warden’s control.
Most prisons have a yard where inmates can enjoy fresh air, sunshine, and some physical activities. MCC’s downtown location caused a problem when it came to inmates getting their rec time.
That period of the day when a prisoner could work out his frustrations via constructive physical activity took place on the roof of the building. And that area was surrounded by four walls, and topped off with a cage — which didn’t exactly give the scene a feeling of being outdoors.
The space itself consisted of one slightly reduced-in-size full basketball court (on one side), and a half-court set up and handball court on the other. The side with the full basketball court hosted a game I would hardly call basketball.
Alternately, I called it “animal ball” and “rug ball” (rugby-like) because it was so rough and without officiating. Those who would participate almost always came back black and blue or with injuries because what happened under the basket was pretty much uncontrolled aggression.
But the real problem from my standpoint concerned the complete lack of sunlight. I need not cite studies that indicate human beings really do need sun in their lives. But because of those four walls, that precious commodity simply was unavailable to an inmate unless his rec time was early in the afternoon.
The exact hour inmates could ascend to the roof varied depending on in which unit a prisoner was housed. Some units went to the roof in that crucial time period when there actually was sunshine in the rec area. Others, not so much. Given that 5 South’s hit the roof from 5 to 6 PM, we simply never saw the sun.
The issue was moot for PM kitchen workers (like me) anyway, because we worked during those hours. Even shitty jails like Rikers have a second rec time for inmates who are working during the normal rec hours. But MCC did not.
It occurred to me that the warden should have rotated each unit’s rec time to address the issue. But the truth is that not only did some units never see the sun because of that lack of simple rotation…but often, we were not given the rec time afforded us by law because there wasn’t enough staff on the premises to handle the roof duty.
And there were other occasions when our rec was suspended because a single inmate had done something to anger the warden whereupon he suspended rec time to punish everybody for one inmate’s indiscretion. Kind of like the army. One soldier fucks up and the entire regiment has to drop and give the officer fifty.
As a result of all these circumstances, I got almost no sunshine for 11 months. And I could see it in the cloudy condition of my fingernails. Medical professionals will tell you that to determine your general health, a glance at one’s fingernails will tell an accurate story. Mine did. I needed sunshine. And I wasn’t getting it at MCC.
In one of the first articles I read about MCC upon googling the institution, I read about the remarkably serious roach and rodent infestations. Now, I’m not one who hasn’t lived with roaches and mice. As a resident of the East Village, I’m all too familiar with vermin. But I’d never experienced anything like the animal life at MCC (and I’m not talking about my fellow prisoners).
The resident insects were not baby roaches. We’re talkin’ two-inch flying water bugs. Mice infested the common area with a vengeance and commonly ate inmates’ commissary during the night. We’d hear them pushing around paper bags at 3 AM. Or simply see them scurrying about. In one cell I occupied, we’d see families of mice at the same time! It wasn’t just one errant mouse. It was that bad.
But my issue with the wildlife that populated our cells paled in the face of the human wildlife I had to deal with for a year. I have never met a group of louder, more ignorant, more boring, and over-opinionated morons in my life. And bear in mind, I drove a taxi for 15 years!
Of the 150 or so inmates I lived with during my year at MCC, there might have been three I’d have any interest in knowing on the outside. And one of them claimed to have killed 32 people. That right there should be an indication of exactly how socially destitute MCC’s landscape truly was for an educated and civilized inmate.
Actually, some of the officers turned out to be my salvation. From my Google research, I got the impression that the CO’s would be cold, distant, and mean. But that was the exception and not the rule. I’d also read that inmates should not hang with the officers too much, or other prisoners might suspect them of snitching. Also not true.
The officers mingled with and even fist-bumped inmates routinely. The attitude was: “We’re all stuck in this shithole together. The only difference is (from the officers’ point of view) I get to go home at night and you don’t. But I’ll be back here the next day for 30 more years until my retirement. You’ll be out in a year or two — hopefully forever.”
To a certain extent, the officers would serve more time in the prison than the inmates. Their self-imposed sentence would just be broken up into pieces and of course, they’d get paid for their time served. So in essence, there was that common ground.
Additionally, many of the officers stood where they stood only because they hadn’t been caught doing the same stuff as the inmates they watched. Dress them up in khakis and trust me, you’d never know the difference between the CO’s and the inmates.
Most of the officers liked me because I didn’t complain a lot, I worked two jobs (which they respected), and as the inmate suicide watch boss, I was a source of juicy gossip. Murderers like Nicholas Gibson and billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein fascinated the CO’s. Every night when I came back from watch, there was an officer curious as to what had happened that night with whichever infamous suicidal inmate.
While I did enjoy the company of at least some of the officers, there was one I really did not like. I can’t recall his name. I just remember he was a white guy with the numbers 611 tattooed on his neck. He disliked me for the crime of showing sympathy for a chomo inmate I worked with downstairs on suicide watch.
Weber was the kind of goofy guy who played the tuba in the elementary school band. He was a Jewish inmate with a Master's degree in Special Ed. Yes, he could be annoying at times. But basically, my gut told me Weber was a good person at the core — despite his crime. I know that sounds ridiculous. But there was something about the guy that told me he was just a lonely and misunderstood nerd — and not the predator he’d been cracked up to be.
My impression was correct. Once released, I Googled Jeffrey and discovered that he had promised to be very gentle with the (supposed) underage girl he had chatted with on the internet because it was her first time. As predators go, that’s about as benign as it gets.
That mattered not to 611. He was rude and condescending to me throughout my stay simply because I refused to shun Jeffrey Weber for his crime. I never really “got” that a murderer was worthy of more consideration than a guy who wanted to gently deflower and worship a young virgin. Not that either crime is worthy of admiration and accolade. But hey! We’re in prison. We all committed a crime. Who are we to judge?
As bad as the inmates were, what I most hated about MCC was the incredible incompetence of the administrative staff and the manner in which they ran the prison. I don’t know who hired all these people. But pretty much everybody who did the hiring — and all those who were hired — should be fired. I’d say they should all go drive a cab. But I have little doubt that they’d fuck that up, too.
Here’s a perfect example of MCC’s bureaucratic inefficiency: The prison was in need of a town driver. As an ex-cabby with a short sentence, no incentive to run away, no points on his license, and a working knowledge of the city’s geography, I was a prime candidate. The warden was smitten and wanted me for the job.
“We don’t seem to have your license in your jacket,” said he. I looked at the warden quizzically and thought “Why the fuck would you have my license in the first place? I was specifically informed to not bring anything but prescriptions, glasses, and religious articles to prison. Why would I then bring a license?”
Alternatively, I rationally responded “So call the DMV and get a copy of my license. How difficult is that?” “Oh, no. We can’t do that,” he responded. “You have to have it sent in by certified mail.”
That sounded absurd to me. I would have to have my 75-year-old corporate lawyer cousin (a female) go to my apartment, lift the bed, go underneath to get my wallet, pull out my license, and then go to the post office and send that license to my counselor. Really? You can’t just call the DMV and have my license faxed over?
So I got cousin Lynn to do all that. And what happened? Nothing! A few weeks later, I went to my counselor (who I knew had received my license because he told me so) and asked him what the fuck was up.
“Why have my cousin go to all that bother so the warden can then do nothing about making me town driver?” To which said counselor threw his hands in the air and rolled his eyes indicating “This is MCC! Would you expect anything different?”
Then there was the issue of understaffing. “Get ready to be locked in for the weekend,” said one of the kitchen officers. “It’s a holiday and CO’s are calling off .” Really? You can’t find enough officers to work overtime on a holiday weekend so we don’t have to be locked down and eating bag nasties for lunch and dinner?
Reports have it that MCC is so unpopular with employees that the BOP is offering bonuses to any officers who will take the assignment. As a result of the situation, those who would show for work often stayed overtime and were overtired from the grind. That reality came back to haunt the warden in spades when Jeffrey Epstein killed himself while the officers on duty slept or played with the internet.
I’m sure I could laundry-list all the indignities to which I was subjected by an overworked and under-talented administration. But there’s really one I want to dwell on. And that’s the extension of my stay owing to bureaucratic incompetence.
Federal inmates who are sentenced to more than a year, are entitled to 15% off their sentence for good time. That’s why inmates like me and many others suffer sentences of a year and a day. It’s the judge’s — and system’s -way of saving a few bucks and rewarding prisoners for good behavior.
Inmates are also afforded halfway house time (what it sounds like) and in the Second Chance and First Step Acts (both of which address overcrowding of prisons and overspending on incarcerating individuals who really don’t pose a threat to the community), home confinement for an additional portion of a prisoner’s sentence.
The First Step Act actually mandated an additional 10% home confinement for low-risk offenders (that would be me). The 10% could be superseded by a proviso in the Second Chance Act which provides 33% additional home confinement for low-risk and low needs (me again) prisoners over the age of 60.
The 10% contingency would have had me out on October 6th. The Elderly Offenders Initiative…either early September or early August depending on whether you did the calculation based on the year and a day — or the year and a day minus 15% (the law wasn’t clear on that).
Knowing about these two contingencies, I began chasing them early on. Rumor (true rumor) around the unit was our case manager was a moron, and most inmates were not getting their halfway house time. The party line from the case managers (there were two during my sentence) was that due to the amazing turnover rate at MCC, they simply couldn’t keep up with their workload.
My attitude was “Who gives a shit about your fucking workload? Work till the job gets done. You’re fucking with our lives here!” I actually offered to help them free of charge, to which they responded “I can’t let you do that. You’re not allowed to see other inmates’ paperwork.” (Can you imagine? I offer to work free to get guys out when they’re supposed to be released and I get turned down! God bless America!)
The bottom line was that despite all my protestations, I did not get any of the home confinement or halfway house time to which I was entitled. Even threatening to sue the BOP brought absolutely no results. All I could get was eye rolls from sympathetic staffers indicating “This is MCC! You know it’s a shithole. We don’t want to be here either. Deal with it. You’ll be out soon anyway. You’ll survive, Mersey.”
After Jeffrey Epstein killed himself and the facility caught a tidal wave of bad publicity, the BOP brought in reinforcements to address all the bureaucratic problems and omissions at the prison. But by that point, it was too late for me.
And so…I served out my full sentence less the 15% good time until (drum roll) a state bureaucrat fucked up and guess what! Instead of finally going home (albeit after I should have according to law), I was forwarded to Rikers Island city jail thanks to yet another incompetent government employee (the State of New York this time) to serve an additional 82 days.
Here’s what the experience was like:
In summation, my almost year-long stay at MCC federal prison was more a window into just how incompetently the government can run a prison than it was a hugely threatening and traumatizing experience. MCC is a shithole for sure. But I survived my stay with no scars — physical or otherwise. It just wasn’t all that terrible. But if my name was Chatsworth Osborne III? I might not have done as well.