The New York prison in which businessman Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in 2019, accused of sex trafficking of minors, will close its doors to “solve problems,” the US Department of Justice reported Thursday.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center of New York (MCC NY, its acronym in English), located in southern Manhattan, will close “at least temporarily,” and according to sources told the local New York Daily News , the closure could occur on next month.
“In an effort to address the issues at MCC NY as quickly and efficiently as possible, the Department has decided to close the MCC, at least temporarily, until those issues have been resolved ,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
The text also indicates that the “deactivation plans are underway” , and that more details will be given about them while “the process continues” .
The jail currently holds 263 inmates, compared to more than 700 in previous years, figures from the Department of Prisons show.
A worker at the center, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Daily News that the compound “is falling apart.”
“Literally, for years, there are water leaks,” said the source, who said that one of the main reasons for making this decision is “the deterioration of the infrastructure.”
He also pointed out that most of the inmates of this jail will go to the Brooklyn federal prison, the Sunset Park Metropolitan Detention Center, where more than 100 of them have been transferred in the last year.
Some of the highest-profile US prisoners have been incarcerated in the MCC, including drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Jeffrey Epstein, the late businessman accused of a vast network of sex trafficking of minors who He has been linked to figures of the stature of former US President Bill Clinton or Prince Andrew of England.
The death of Epstein in this room caused a huge controversy, and uncovered a whole series of failures in his systems, such as several defective security cameras located in front of the deceased’s cell. EFE