R Kelly, the legendary R&B singer, has been sentenced to 30 years in jail for sexually abusing children. However, the 55-year-old was first arrested in 2019 and held in a Chicago detention centre, before a federal judge ruled that R Kelly would be moved to New York to face trial. At the time, he was transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn. 

Popularly known as MDC, this facility is located in the Sunset Park neighbourhood in New York City, and is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. MDC normally holds prisoners serving brief sentences or facing trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. 

In 2019, Cameron Lindsay, a former warden called the MDC “one of the most troubled, if not the most troubled facility in the Bureau of Prisons”, as per New York Times. 

Also Read | A timeline of the allegations that led to R Kelly’s conviction

Apart from Kelly, the jail – which houses male and female inmates – also held paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein’s disgraced socialite girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. 

There have been numerous filings from Maxwell’s attorneys drawing attention to the terrible living conditions in the MDC. They spoke of microwaved plastic melted onto food, during meals, the drinking water being undrinkable, and that Maxwell was in a cell filled with the stench of overflowing toilets from the floor above. 

“The MDC — especially the East Building where Ms Maxwell is held — is permeated with mould and vermin”, Maxwell’s attorney Bobbi Sternheim wrote to the judge overseeing the case. 

R Kelly during his time at the MDC, contracted COVID, in February 2022. 

Also Read | R Kelly net worth: How singer convicted of child sex abuse lost his wealth

US District Judge Colleen McMahon, in a sentencing hearing in May 2021, slammed the MDC, saying “The single thing in the five years that I was chief judge of this court that made me the craziest was my complete and utter inability to do anything meaningful about the conditions at the MCC, especially at the MCC and the MDC, [which] are run by morons”, adding, “There is no continuity, there is no leadership, there is no ability to get anything done. They lurch from crisis to crisis, from the gun smuggling to Jeffrey Epstein”, as per New York Daily News. 

In January 2019, the situation at MDC came to national attention, when a blackout amid a polar vortex left prisoners stuck in their jail cells at frigid single-degree temperatures, with little light, no avenue to speak to lawyers or family members, unable to receive medication, and unable to file administrative complaints, as per a Department of Justice report. 

Since then an Inspector General report has been compiled listing nine changes the MDC can make in the future for better operations, but critics have argued they’re too limited in scope, as per Insider. 

The facility has held other notable inmates like Tekashi 6ix9ine and Michael Cohen.