The jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself is crumbling

NEW YORK — Inside the notorious federal jail in Lower Manhattan, small chunks of concrete fall from the ceiling. Once hailed as a prototype for a new kind of federal jail and the most secure in the country, the Metropolitan Correctional Center has become a blighted wreck, so deteriorated it’s impossible to safely house inmates The Justice Department said last month it would close the jail in the next months to undertake much-needed repairs - but it may never reopen. Its population had ballooned to 539 inmates -- 90 more than it had been designed for -- prompting a judge to declare the jail “unacceptably cramped and oppressive for most healthy inmates.” Even before news that the jail would close, judges were taking the deteriorating conditions into account when sentencing inmates, crediting them extra for time served because they had to endure life there. In April, Manhattan Federal Judge Paul Oetken gave Daniel Gonzalez a reduced sentence of time served on drug charges after the inmate described a “chaotic” stay at the jail that he said included being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day, not showering for days and a persistent foot infection. David Patton, the executive director and attorney-in-chief of the Federal Defenders of New York, said he was “genuinely surprised” that the government was closing the Metropolitan Correctional Center, which he called a failed institution.