MCC New York (Closed): Metropolitan Correctional Center

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

MCC New York at a glance

MCC New York is closed. The Justice Department announced in August 2021 that it was shutting the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, at least temporarily, and by October 2021 the building held no one. It never reopened: the Bureau of Prisons facility page showed a population of 0 on June 11, 2026, and the jail was off the Bureau’s institution roster by September 5, 2026 and still absent when we queried it on September 18, 2026. This page gives no mailing address, deposit channel or telephone number for it.

Each row rests on a dated Bureau record or Inspector General report; where two disagree, the row gives both.

Official name	Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York (MCC New York)
BOP facility code	NYM
Status	Closed. Closing announced by the Justice Department in August 2021; closed in October 2021 on the Inspector General’s account; absent from the Bureau’s institution roster on September 5, 2026 and again on September 18, 2026.
Location	Manhattan (New York County), New York, in the Civic Center district near City Hall and the courthouses
Security level	Administrative. The Bureau’s facility page, captured June 11, 2026, read “Administrative security metropolitan correctional center.”
Held	Men, and women too until shortly before April 2021, when the visiting auditor recorded a change from coed to all-male housing within the preceding six months. The Bureau’s 2026 facility page read “Male offenders.”
Mission	Mostly pretrial detention for the federal courts of the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York (Inspector General, June 2023)
Opened	1975, as the Bureau’s first high-rise facility, twelve stories tall (PREA audit report, October 1, 2021)
Medical care level	Care Level 2, as the PREA auditor recorded it in 2021
Bureau region	Northeast Region
Judicial district	Southern District of New York
Population, last published	0 (Bureau facility page, captured June 11, 2026). About 750 people at any given time while it operated, on the Inspector General’s account; the PREA auditor recorded a designated capacity of 883 and an average daily population of 711 for the twelve months before the April 2021 visit.
Bureau relationship	Bureau-operated federal jail, 1975 to 2021
Now	We found no Bureau record of a decision about the building, so this page says nothing about its current use.
Finding someone	Use the Bureau’s Inmate Locator

What happened to MCC New York?

The Bureau closed it in 2021, two years after the death in custody that made it world-famous, and the record keeps the two apart. The Inspector General wrote in June 2023 that the Bureau temporarily closed the jail in October 2021 “due to substandard conditions that are unrelated to this investigation” (Report 23-085 at 5), meaning the inquiry into the 2019 death.

• 1975. The Bureau activated the building, which the PREA auditor called “the first ‘high-rise’ facility to be used by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP)” (audit report at 8).
• August 10, 2019. Jeffrey Epstein, held there awaiting trial, was found hanged in his cell in the Special Housing Unit. The findings are below.
• April 2020. A judge of the Eastern District of New York ordered the wardens of MCC New York and MDC Brooklyn to send status reports every two weeks on their COVID-19 response to the court, the Federal Defenders of New York, and the U.S. Marshals and U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern and Southern Districts (Report 23-054 at 75).
• August 2021. The Inspector General’s pandemic review records: “In August 2021, the Department announced that it was closing MCC New York, at least temporarily, to assess steps to improve conditions at the facility” (Report 23-054 at 2 n.1, repeated at 75 n.123).
• October 1, 2021. The final report of an outside auditor who had examined the jail in April under the Prison Rape Elimination Act: “As of the writing of this final report, the facility is closed and there are no inmates being housed at MCC New York” (at 7).
• June 11, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, still online, showed the jail closed, a population of 0 and no inmate mailing address.
• September 5 and 18, 2026. Absent from the Bureau’s institution roster on both dates. The old facility address on bop.gov now redirects to the Bureau’s general locations page.

One detail does not line up. Report 23-085 dates the closing to October 2021 at p. 5, but at p. 82, relaying a technician’s account, it speaks of “August 2021, when the MCC closed.” August was the announcement, and by October 1 the building was empty. We found no Bureau document withdrawing the words “at least temporarily,” and no announcement of a reopening.

Where are the people who were held at MCC New York?

Scattered, and this page does not say where any of them went. The auditor recorded that when the closing was announced in late August 2021 the Bureau said “all inmates would be transferred to another local facility” (audit report at 7). That covers only the last people held there. Anyone held at MCC New York in earlier years may have been sentenced, designated, moved or released many times since.

The Bureau’s Inmate Locator is the only place to look. Enter a first and a last name together, or a register number; a surname alone is rejected as an invalid search. Try each half of a two-part surname as well as the joined form. Once a release is recorded the entry shows a status and a date instead of a facility, such as “Not in BOP Custody as of:”, so an empty or unexpected answer settles nothing.

A result that reads “New York” can mean the Residential Reentry Management office of that name, RRM New York, rather than the closed jail; a reentry office oversees halfway-house and home-confinement placements. Read the facility type beside it. Our guides to the federal inmate locator and to federal prison transfers explain the screens and the moves.

What was MCC New York?

A federal jail in the middle of Manhattan’s court district. The Inspector General called it “a federal administrative detention facility operated by the BOP that primarily provides pretrial detention services for the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York,” with about 750 people held at any time, most of them charged but not convicted (Report 23-085 at 5). It was a jail for the pretrial stage of a case, rated administrative security, outside the minimum-to-high scale.

The auditor’s report supplies the physical picture (audit report at 8). The twelve-story building stood in Lower Manhattan’s Civic Center, near City Hall and the state and federal courthouses, and held seven general-population units, a Special Housing Unit, and what the auditor described as “the largest Special Administrative Measures (SAM) Unit in the BOP outside of ADX Florence in Colorado,” a unit of single cells locked down twenty-three hours a day.

The building was failing before it closed. In September 2018 the warden asked for $800,000 to replace the whole camera system, and as that work began Bureau officials recognized that the jail’s “mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems were also in need of major repairs”; technicians lent from other prisons were sometimes pulled off the job to cover custody posts (Report 23-085 at 82). The Bureau’s camera review, begun after a 2016 Inspector General recommendation, counted MCC New York among 45 of its 122 institutions that needed upgrades (at 110), and by the technician’s account the new camera wiring was still unfinished when the jail closed (at 82).

This page once listed famous people said to have been held here, with no record behind any line. The list is gone; the one person named here is the subject of an Inspector General report.

What did the Inspector General find about the Epstein death?

The Inspector General investigated jointly with the FBI and published Report 23-085 in June 2023. It covers Jeffrey Epstein’s detention at MCC New York from his arrest on July 6, 2019 to his death on August 10, and records these failures:

• He was placed in the Special Housing Unit on July 7, 2019 “due to the significant media coverage of his case and awareness of his notoriety among MCC New York inmates” (at 1).
• After a July 23 incident and a period on suicide watch, the Psychology Department emailed more than 70 staff on July 30 that he “needs to be housed with an appropriate cellmate” (at 17). His cellmate left the jail on August 9 and no one replaced him (at 2).
• The unit’s staff made no inmate counts after about 4 p.m. on August 9 and no 30-minute rounds after about 10:40 p.m., and count slips and round sheets were falsified to show that they had (at 3).
• A disk failure on July 29 stopped recording on roughly half of the jail’s approximately 150 cameras, including the unit’s, though they still broadcast live; staff found it on August 8 (at 17, 81).
• The report found that “staffing shortages, a persistent issue for the BOP, compromised the ability of MCC New York staff to adequately supervise inmates” (at 94); one employee on the unit had worked 24 hours straight (at 113).

On how he died the report is clear. The city medical examiner found the cause hanging and the manner suicide (at 2), and the Inspector General “did not uncover evidence that contradicted the FBI’s determination regarding the absence of criminality in connection with how Epstein died” (at 3). The recorded video of the unit’s common area showed no one approaching his tier between about 10:40 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. (at 3–4).

Two employees on the unit that night were charged with falsifying records; the charges were dismissed on December 13, 2021 after both completed deferred prosecution agreements, and prosecutors declined to charge others who had falsified records (at 6). The report made eight recommendations, on cellmates, rounds and counts, cell searches, cameras and staffing, and on June 22, 2023 the Bureau said it “concurs with the recommendations resulting from this engagement” (at 110–114; app. A at 115).

Federal prisons still operating in New York

Three: FCI Otisville, FCI Ray Brook and MDC Brooklyn, the only Bureau detention center left in the state. The Bureau’s population report of September 10, 2026 counted 3,045 people across the three. Our New York federal prisons hub gives each one’s security level and sources, and the Northeast Region page covers the regional office.

We do not suggest where anyone will be held, because the Bureau designates on its own criteria. Our explainer on major federal prison closures and deactivations sets MCC New York beside the other institutions the Bureau has shut.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where we can help

For someone once held at MCC New York, any custody problem today belongs to the institution that holds them now, and that is where we work: on problems inside a federal prison, administrative remedies that begin with a BP-9, and compassionate release motions.

Talk Through a Custody Problem. You leave knowing whether this is grievable, and how long there is to act. Conditions inside are sometimes evidence, and the administrative clock runs whether or not anyone files.

Call 843-620-1100 or contact us to arrange a paid one-hour consultation about a specific situation. Calls are answered 24 hours a day.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a federal criminal defense and post-conviction firm based in Columbia, South Carolina, practicing nationwide. Mentions of New York places on this page do not imply an office or a lawyer there.

Sources and currency

Inspector General reports

• Investigation and Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Custody, Care, and Supervision of Jeffrey Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, New York, Report 23-085, DOJ Office of the Inspector General, June 2023 (posted June 27, 2023). Placement in the Special Housing Unit at 1; the autopsy and the cellmate at 2; counts, rounds and the recorded video at 3–4; mission, population and the October 2021 closing at 5; charges and dismissals at 6; the cellmate directive and the recording failure at 17; cameras at 81; the camera project, repairs and the technician’s August 2021 reference at 82; staffing at 94 and 113; the 45-institution camera review at 110; recommendations at 110–114; the Bureau’s response, app. A at 115. PDF read September 18, 2026.
• Capstone Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, Report 23-054, DOJ Office of the Inspector General, March 2023 (posted March 21, 2023). The August 2021 closing announcement at 2 n.1 and 75 n.123; the April 2020 Eastern District order at 75. PDF read September 18, 2026.

Bureau of Prisons records

• Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Audit Report: MCC New York, final report October 1, 2021 (on-site visit April 6–8, 2021), prepared by an independent auditor and published on bop.gov. Capacity at 2; average daily population and the populations held at 3; the late-August 2021 announcement and the empty building at 7; the facility description and care level at 8. Read September 18, 2026.
• MCC New York, Bureau of Prisons facility page, captured June 11, 2026 from bop.gov: closed, population 0, “Male offenders,” no inmate mailing address. The address now redirects to the Bureau’s locations page (checked September 18, 2026).
• Our Locations, Federal Bureau of Prisons. Institution roster queried September 18, 2026: 165 records, none of them MCC New York; already absent on September 5, 2026. New York population from the Bureau’s report of September 10, 2026.
• Find an inmate, Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Sources reviewed September 2026. If the Bureau publishes a decision about the Manhattan building, or any record reversing the 2021 closing, this page will be updated to say so.

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026