What’s life like for Diddy in the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in New York?He’s awaiting trial for federal charges of sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution and racketeering with conspiracy. Diddy denies them all.Catana Yehudah served a sentence in the MDC for fraud and federal public defender Andrew Dalack has represented people who have been detained there. They tell Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty about life inside.The Diddy on Trial podcast is here to investigate the rumours, confront the theories, and give you the answers that you need.We also want YOU to be part of the conversation. Have you any burning questions about the cases or the upcoming trial? Heard a theory that doesn’t sit right with you? Get in touch now via WhatsApp: 0330 123 555 1.Presenter: Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty Producer: Laura Jones Sound Design: Richard Hannaford Production Coordinator: Hattie Valentine Editor: Clare FordhamCommissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts Assistant Commissioner: Will Drysdale Commissioning Producer: Adam Eland Commissioning Assistant Producer: Rechmial Miller
Chapter 1: What charges does Diddy face?
BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome back to Diddy on Trial with me, Anushka Matandadawati. Every week you can find us on BBC Sounds giving you the latest news on what's shaping up to be the trial of the decade. Diddy has been charged with sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution, and racketeering with conspiracy, he denies it all.
Now, I hope everybody got some time off over the holidays, including maybe even Diddy's defense team, although I doubt there would have been much rest in Mark Agnifilo's household, that's one of Diddy's defense lawyers, because while he's prepping for the dawn of the Diddy trial, his wife, Karen Agnifilo, is heading up the defense for the murder suspect who went viral for a smile, Luigi Mangione,
He's being held at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, or some people call it the MDC. And the Daily Mail has reported that it's inside that very jail that Diddy had a meltdown over the holidays and was asking prison guards to take him to the hospital. We asked his team about this. They denied these claims, stating that he continues to stay strong and focused on his defense.
But they specifically told us that he missed his family on Christmas Day, a holiday he traditionally spends with his children. Now, the idea of Diddy in a prison has sparked a lot of interest, going from a life of glamour to a jail which a US judge has called dangerous and barbaric. And we're going to talk about that jail today. Abby on Instagram asked a question.
She said, is it as bad as people say it is? I feel like people are hyping it up because P. Diddy's in there. Well, it's also been home to R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and the fallen king of crypto, Sam Bankman Freed. So today we're taking you behind the bars of the MDC, asking how Diddy's life has changed inside it and whether it is as bad as people say. My first guest is Katana Yehuda.
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Chapter 2: What is life like in the MDC?
Katana, you served time in the MDC for fraud. You also have a brother who was in there for gun possession, and you've protested against the conditions in the jail. But for people who have absolutely no idea what it's like to serve time at all, what are the first couple of days like for somebody going into jail for the first time?
The first couple of days are heartbreaking because you're taken completely away from family. There's no interaction with anyone except prisoners or the guards. So you have no idea what to expect as far as going through things with the prisoner or the guards because it can go either way when you first walk through those prison gates.
Chapter 3: How do first days in jail feel?
So it's really, even for the toughest person in the world, it's scary because you just don't know what to expect. And do you have all your belongings taken away? Everything. I went in with extension braids in my hair. They made me sit in a cell and take every braid out of my hair before I was let into population. I don't think that the MDC is for any human being at all.
I mean, I'm not saying that no one belongs, you know, you commit a crime, you have to wait to, you know, your trial and everything else. But I don't think that jail is fit for anyone unless they clean up the conditions.
Chapter 4: What are the conditions like in the MDC?
Lots of prisoners complain about lots of different jails and they say that the conditions are not up to scratch. What, in your opinion, makes the MDC stand out? What makes it worse?
What makes it worse is the food. Mostly everything is stale food. It's old food that's donated by other people that they wrap up or they cook for you. Mostly everything is full of roaches and the giant cockroaches. You can smell the mold. You can smell the rot. You can smell the jail that it needs. It needs to be rebuilt. It needs help. I don't think anyone should be in that particular jail.
There are lots of different people inside that jail. We know that there's a wing that houses high profile prisoners, R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell, now P. Diddy's in there. Are you aware of the high profile prisoners? Do you have any interaction with them?
We never had interaction with high profile prisoners at all, ever.
Chapter 5: Are high-profile prisoners treated differently?
One of the main reasons that a lot of people know about the Metropolitan Detention Center was because it made headlines in 2019. And one of the issues they had was keeping their prison population warm. And it gets extremely cold in Brooklyn.
Well, in 2019, something went wrong. They had a power outage. They didn't have any water. They didn't have any lights. They didn't have any heat. And the mayor tried to bring over, the city council tried to bring over blankets And the warden wouldn't accept it. My brother called me from a cell phone that was not supposed to be there. And he, you know, he cried.
He said, listen, I think I'm a dying here. So I panicked. I said, what the hell you mean? You know, you having problems with a prisoner? Do I have to, you know, call a lawyer or, you know, what can I do? He said, no, I'm going to freeze to death. I said, freeze? He said, yeah, we don't have no water. So I called the news station and made a whole big show.
And I went down there and I had to do something about it, not just for my brother, but for anybody. He was telling me that he thought his roommate was going to die because his feet was turning purple. They didn't give my brother his medication.
Just take me back to the moment because I've seen the videos of you outside protesting. It is extremely impactful. You can hear prisoners shouting down from their cells saying, we are freezing.
Inmates in a Brooklyn federal jail crying out for help. Their desperation caused by what some say are freezing conditions inside the jail.
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Chapter 6: How has the MDC's reputation been affected?
I screamed to the inmates. I said, everybody, please be quiet. And they stopped banging. I said, if you are freezing cold, bang on the windows. It was so loud you could hear it from blocks away. It was heartbreaking, you know, for me to know that, you know, my brother and other people were going through this.
Yeah, and look, I've spoken to your brother, Jason, about this incident. He shared with me some diary entries that he kept from that time. At one point he wrote, I have socks on my toilet seat so that when I sit down it will be warm. I mean, these are the sort of lengths that prisoners were going through.
It was horrible because, you know, my brother's a man's man. So to hear him on the phone trembling like, I don't think I'm going to make it here. Let me tell you what's going on. That was scary for me.
You know, and at that time, the news was people were going up, picking up stray dogs, taking them off the streets and taking the bums off the trains and off the streets so they wouldn't freeze to death. But yet and still, you would allow these prisoners in that jail to freeze.
And look, we did ask the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a statement on what happened in 2019. They didn't directly address it, but they said they have an administrative remedy program for incarcerated individuals to seek formal review and redress of almost any concern they have regarding their incarceration.
The Bureau of Prisons say the MDC should be safe, humane and provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens. Does the MDC, in your opinion, live up to what they say their prison should do?
No, there's no programs in that prison to help you. You know, to help you do anything. Like I said, because you're in prison and you're serving time or you're waiting, you know, to go to court or to go to trial or whatever it is, does not mean that you're not a human being. You know, just like what's going on with Diddy. At the end of the day, he still deserves to be treated as a human being.
You know, he still deserves a fair trial, innocent before proven guilty, whatever happened to that. So how do you keep yourself entertained throughout the day? What do you do? Well, I just read books. I read books and I daydreamed a lot. I mean, at least we got to go get some air on the roof. At least we got to interact with other inmates and, you know, be able to talk.
you know, use the phone, read a book, go to church, you know, because there were little things that they would allow us to do, like have a chapel come in and, you know, pray with us and things. Like literally just to keep, you know, keep my head on straight, I prayed a lot.
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Chapter 7: What are the psychological impacts of incarceration?
Andrew Dalek is a New York-based federal public defender who has represented lots of clients who've stayed in that prison. Andrew, is it really as bad as people say?
Well, first, Anushka, I want to thank you and the BBC for taking an interest in the conditions at MVC Brooklyn, because it is an important issue of significant public interest. Anybody who has a loved one detained in that facility, that they deeply care about their well-being and their safety there, and they have good reason to. It is as bad of a place as people say it is.
But the crux of the issue really is a completion of, I think, three factors that sort of work together to create a perfect storm. The first is chronic understaffing. So the jail is routinely operating anywhere from two-thirds to 75% sort of capacity at best at any given point. The second is overcrowdedness. There's just too many people there to begin with.
And then the third is a certain bureaucratic intransigence. So there are just there just does not appear to be a meaningful political will to do anything about the situation in MVC Brooklyn. And that's why we're trying to seize upon opportunities like this when it seems like the public takes a
a particular interest in the conditions there because there are certain high-profile individuals detained there. And we're happy that's the case, but it shouldn't be that people should care about the conditions of a particular facility because the people who are housed there are popular or have sort of public stature. Everybody's life matters equally in this regard.
And so it's really important that the public knows what's happening there.
You've seen other jails. What makes this one stand out?
MVC Brooklyn is divided into two separate buildings. There's a West building and there's an East building.
What happens, especially in the West building, is that if there's a problem in a particular unit, let's say there's a fight, let's say there's an argument or some sort of a dispute between a staff member and a detainee, the facility's knee-jerk reaction is to lock the whole unit down and sometimes to lock the whole facility down. And that's in large part because it's understaffed.
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Chapter 8: What solutions are needed for prison reform?
They're denied access to showers. They're denied access to hot food. They're denied access to the telephone to speak with their loved ones. It's much more difficult for them to meet with their attorneys in any sort of like an expeditious fashion. It puts a tremendous amount of strain on people.
And that's just notwithstanding the psychological impact of being confined to a very tiny cell with another person for days at a time. In addition to the psychological impact of being locked in on a regular basis, our clients routinely complain about inadequate amounts of food that oftentimes is inedible. People routinely complain of inadequate access to recreation.
So I have clients there who throughout their entire time at MVC Brooklyn never saw the sun. You know, never were allowed to go outside and be able to just breathe fresh air. There's also the issue of safety.
So when there's a dispute or when there's a problem between, you know, detainees, and you can obviously imagine how being locked up for interminable periods of time only enhances the stress level and enhances the tension. When that tension culminates in some sort of a fight, there's contraband rampant in that facility.
And there's homemade weapons that are, you know, created out of pieces of metal and other sort of makeshift items that a lot of different detainees have available to them. And so when there's a fight or when there's some sort of other conflict, it can escalate. And when it escalates, people get hurt, people get stabbed.
And it's a very sort of volatile environment that is a terribly scary place to be.
And look, lots of prisoners from lots of different jails say it's terrible inside, the conditions are awful. That's a widespread critique that could be applied to a lot of places. But you were involved with a case, you represented someone where a judge made a pretty damning statement about MDC Brooklyn. Can you talk to me a little bit about what happened with Mr. Chavez?
Yes, so Gustavo Chavez is my client. He was charged with drug offense in the federal system, sort of receiving a package in the mail containing drugs. So whether you're convicted after trial or convicted because you've pled guilty to certain kinds of drug offenses, the law says you have to go to jail before you're ultimately sentenced by the judge.
In Mr. Chavez's case, he did in fact plead guilty to one of those drug offenses that ordinarily required him to be remanded to jail pending sentencing. But Mr. Chavez presented with some challenges. He's an older man. He has health issues.
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