Ghislaine Maxwell's New Jail Cell Conditions Compared to Turkish Prison

Jeffrey Epstein's former confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested on Thursday in connection with Epstein's alleged sexual crimes. Ever since her arrest, Maxwell has been in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. According to Bloomberg, her new accommodations at the detention center are a far cry from the New Hampshire mansion that she was previously residing in.

The Metropolitan Detention Center is notorious for its poor conditions. As Bloomberg noted, a magistrate judge once said that she was hesitant to send women there because of the "unconscionable" conditions. The federal jail houses 1,600 male and female detainees and is a part of a compound of massive shipping warehouses that were built at the turn of the century. Federal investigators have said that the Metropolitan Detention Center is one of the worst in U.S. Bureau of Prisons system. Over the years, inmates at the location have been beaten, raped, or held in inhumane conditions. Recently, inmates have voiced their concerns about the lack of safe conditions in the prison amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Derrilyn Needham recently said in a sworn statement that she has been incarcerated at the jail since November 2019 and that, during the current health crisis, she did not receive the proper medical attention that she needed. Needham expressed that she had been experiencing extreme symptoms that she thought could tie back to COVID-19 including fever, chills, trouble breathing, and a cough. However, when she brought up this issue to the assistant warden, she was told that she could not be tested for the respiratory illness. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to Bloomberg's request for comment regarding these claims.

Back in 2016 during a hearing, Cheryl Pollak, a federal magistrate in Brooklyn, voiced her own concerns with the conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center. She even compared the conditions at the location to those of a Turkish prison. "Some of these conditions wouldn't surprise me if we were dealing with a prison in Turkey or a Third World Country," Pollak said. "It's hard for me to believe it's going on in a federal prison." Maxwell is currently being held at this jail following her recent arrest. She is due to appear before a judge in Manhattan via video on July 14, where she will be calling in from jail. Following that discussion, Maxwell will likely be formally charged with a crime in connection with these accusations and she will then enter a plea.