This summer at The Remedy Project, we focused our advocacy on MDC Brooklyn, a federal pre-trial detention facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. By expanding our research efforts, engaging in local organizing, and connecting with new incarcerated members inside the facility, we’ve been able to track the major patterns of harm and abuse inside MDC Brooklyn. It’s become abundantly clear that this facility in no way rehabilitates those incarcerated there, and that it instead perpetuates human rights violations and civil rights abuses.
The main issues we’ve identified over the past three months are the following: extreme medical neglect, assault and harassment, mail hindrance, excessive use of solitary confinement, poor conditions of confinement, and staff retaliation.
Medical neglect is an issue most incarcerated people will face during their time in federal facilities, and MDC Brooklyn is no exception. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of our MDC Brooklyn members have experienced medical neglect or malpractice in one way or another. A Remedy Project member, Vernon, fell and broke his spine at MDC Brooklyn in 2022. Despite the severity of his injury, he was not taken to a hospital for 43 days, and quickly became bed-bound. During this period, he was forced to urinate inside bags which other incarcerated people would have to dispose of because he could not move, and he was not properly medicated with painkillers. When he was finally transferred to a hospital, an MRI confirmed he had broken his neck and three vertebrae in his back, and he was moved to a rehabilitation facility for his spinal injury. At the rehab facility, Vernon received minimal physical therapy, and was barbarically chained to his bed, often for 24 hours at a time. When he returned to MDC Brooklyn, staff was additionally withholding his medical records because they contained “sensitive information” and confiscated the cane he needs to walk. Vernon’s story is horrifying, but not unique. Each of these instances is a glaring example of medical neglect, which dehumanizes and disregards the lives of incarcerated people like Vernon.
Mail hindrance has been reported by several of our members throughout the summer, and is an issue that directly violates an incarcerated person’s rights to communicate with family, access the courts, and file administrative remedies. Our members have suggested that staff are throwing out their letters, holding mail for prolonged periods of time, and stopping legal mail from being received. From the postmarked mail that The Remedy Project received from MDC Brooklyn this summer, we calculated that letters took an average of 15 days to reach us. Nearly one out of three took more than two weeks to arrive. One member, Vincent, told us he had sent six to nine letters, but only two had reached us. On August 3, he wrote, “it looks like MDC is stopping my mail.” Another member housed in the same unit reported that staff sometimes holds outgoing legal mail for two to three months. He described staff lying to incarcerated people that they had signed for mail they say they never received, asking, “if we did sign for it, why are we getting it a month or even sometimes two months later?” It has also been reported by an anonymous member that MDC returns properly addressed outgoing legal mail to courts as “undeliverable.” He says that MDC returns incoming legal mail from courts without notifying the intended recipient, who can only learn of the returned mail through family or friends on the outside. Vernon, who also suffered medical neglect, told us that MDC was withholding his incoming legal mail, making it impossible for him to access documents that are directly relevant to his ongoing legal proceedings. Along with physical mail, we have also heard of instances of MDC staff restricting access to TRULINCS, the online server incarcerated people can use to communicate with Bureau of Prison staff or loved ones on the outside.
Assault and harassment frequently occur within MDC Brooklyn, and staff routinely put incarcerated people in harm's way by hurting them themselves or knowingly placing them in dangerous situations. One of our members was moved to a unit with prominent gang violence, where he was then assaulted. After the attack, he was called to his unit counselor’s office, where he was asked to point out his attackers from a group. After identifying his attackers, he was then told to “get along” and return to the unit. His counselor intentionally put a target on his back by making him “snitch.” Another one of our members, Vincent, recently suffered two heart attacks and was taken to NYU Langone where prison staff wanted the hospital to perform surgery with no prep or advance notice to his family. When he refused the procedure and was discharged, he was sent back to MDC and suffered a severe anxiety attack. During this anxiety attack, he was beaten by 6 MDC officers. The Remedy Project has also received a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) case, which states that MDC Brooklyn staff have sexually assaulted a member through an improper and unnecessary strip search. Guard misconduct is not new to MDC Brooklyn, and the impunity officers are afforded allows them to continue a cycle of violence and abuse.
The Special Housing Unit (SHU) is where incarcerated people are held in solitary confinement for 22 to 24 hours a day in complete isolation, not to rehabilitate, but to demoralize. Through our correspondence, we have found that prison staff use solitary confinement excessively and unnecessarily as a punishment for anything they deem worthy. An anonymous Remedy Project member said he's been in the Special Housing Unit for 2 years because staff falsified disciplinary tickets in retaliation for his self-advocacy. Beyond the sheer isolation of solitary, unnecessary placement in the SHU sets back incarcerated individuals on their path to release or aid. SHU also makes it extraordinarily difficult to communicate with the outside world: family visits are inaccessible, email communication is cut-off, phone access is limited to 15 minutes per month, and physical mail is, in principle, unaffected, but in practice, is often interfered with. These constraints make it difficult in particular for The Remedy Project to support individuals in solitary or to learn details about the conditions in those units.
The physical conditions of confinement in MDC Brooklyn are widely recognized as atrocious and among the worst of federal prisons in this country. Through our members and conversations with their loved ones, we’ve received reports of dirty water in the ICE detention unit that detainees must boil in order to consume. We have received reports of numerous individuals that are being forced to sleep on disintegrating mattresses, including some that have reportedly been chewed up by vermin, torn into multiple pieces, and in such poor condition that one member reports “I’m literally sleeping on metal.” We have also been informed of crumbling walls, flooding inside cells, and mold in the cells. MDC Brooklyn staff have additionally refused to comply with dietary restrictions, putting people’s health at further risk. The overall conditions of MDC Brooklyn can without dispute be described as unsanitary, unsafe, and lacking the necessities anyone would need to live even semi-comfortably.
Retaliation is connected to each of these other concerns, and occurs at an alarming rate in MDC Brooklyn. Prison staff routinely retaliate against incarcerated individuals for exercising their rights by restricting their access to communication with family, writing discipline tickets, placing them in solitary confinement, denying them access to crucial medical care, and a number of other intrusive and violent acts. Remedy hindrance is another form of retaliation that directly impacts our work, and members have shared that Remedy Project communications are being blocked or delayed by prison staff to limit outside aid. The remedy filing process requires incarcerated people to follow an intentionally difficult timeline, and staff interference can make people miss deadlines and kill a potential case for relief. As an example, a Remedy Project member, Willie, was in solitary as a result of multiple disciplinary tickets that he was actively trying to appeal through the administrative remedy process. Prison staff responsible for delivering his appeals repeatedly failed to do so, and additionally assaulted him while still housed in solitary. When he was finally released from SHU, he was released into a unit with individuals that prison staff were aware he was in conflict with. He writes “I was later stabbed … 11 times and rushed to the outside hospital (… and received 39 stitches).” Afterwards, he was placed back in solitary, where he continued for months to be denied access to grievance forms, until he was eventually transferred to another prison. If incarcerated people are not able to use the very limited official avenues provided to them for reprieve without fear of retaliation, they truly have no opportunities to speak for themselves and exercise their basic constitutional, civil, and human rights.
Our members are not the only victims of MDC Brooklyn’s abuses–staff also harass their families and loved ones. We heard recently from two women visiting loved ones and one lawyer visiting a client that MDC Brooklyn’s visitation procedure was recently arbitrarily changed. All three of these women were denied entry to the facility because they were wearing underwire bras. One of these women had been coming to visit her boyfriend in ICE detention every week for nearly 6 months. She had never had a problem with her outfits before. She described that her bra would always set off the initial metal detector, but then a guard would do a secondary search with a wand detector and allow her to enter. Then one day it changed. The guard told her that they did not use the wand detector anymore, and that she had less than 10 minutes to leave, find a change of clothes, and return, otherwise she would be denied entry. This was the first visit she ever missed. Prison staff will claim that changes like this are to stop contraband or to protect the “safety and security” of the institution, but in practice, it is just one more way to punish and dehumanize detained people.
As we have cemented our connections within MDC Brooklyn these past few months, we have uncovered numerous inhumanities that incarcerated individuals and ICE detainees are suffering from. These are not isolated events, but a connected network of systemic injustices employed by MDC staff and the Bureau of Prisons as a whole to diminish the lives of those held in federal prison facilities. Our remedy writers are hard at work to address as many issues as possible, but much work still needs to be done to shine a light on the mistreatment happening inside of this federal facility. We are working closely with local organizations to spread the word, and encourage anyone interested in helping to sign up for our newsletter, become a national volunteer, and donate to our campaigns. We need your help, and so do our members at MDC Brooklyn!
For those interested in the New York area, The Remedy Project will be hosting a Town Hall at the Good Shepard Lutheran Church in Brooklyn on September 19th, 2026 from 5 - 7 pm to discuss our work this summer in greater depth, and expose these atrocities to the neighboring community. Please register with the form on this page, and we hope to see you there!
This summer at The Remedy Project, we focused our advocacy on MDC Brooklyn, a federal pre-trial detention facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. By expanding our research efforts, engaging in local organizing, and connecting with new incarcerated members inside the facility, we’ve been able to track the major patterns of harm and abuse inside MDC Brooklyn. It’s become abundantly clear that this facility in no way rehabilitates those incarcerated there, and that it instead perpetuates human rights violations and civil rights abuses.
The main issues we’ve identified over the past three months are the following: extreme medical neglect, assault and harassment, mail hindrance, excessive use of solitary confinement, poor conditions of confinement, and staff retaliation.
Medical neglect is an issue most incarcerated people will face during their time in federal facilities, and MDC Brooklyn is no exception. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of our MDC Brooklyn members have experienced medical neglect or malpractice in one way or another. A Remedy Project member, Vernon, fell and broke his spine at MDC Brooklyn in 2022. Despite the severity of his injury, he was not taken to a hospital for 43 days, and quickly became bed-bound. During this period, he was forced to urinate inside bags which other incarcerated people would have to dispose of because he could not move, and he was not properly medicated with painkillers. When he was finally transferred to a hospital, an MRI confirmed he had broken his neck and three vertebrae in his back, and he was moved to a rehabilitation facility for his spinal injury. At the rehab facility, Vernon received minimal physical therapy, and was barbarically chained to his bed, often for 24 hours at a time. When he returned to MDC Brooklyn, staff was additionally withholding his medical records because they contained “sensitive information” and confiscated the cane he needs to walk. Vernon’s story is horrifying, but not unique. Each of these instances is a glaring example of medical neglect, which dehumanizes and disregards the lives of incarcerated people like Vernon.
Mail hindrance has been reported by several of our members throughout the summer, and is an issue that directly violates an incarcerated person’s rights to communicate with family, access the courts, and file administrative remedies. Our members have suggested that staff are throwing out their letters, holding mail for prolonged periods of time, and stopping legal mail from being received. From the postmarked mail that The Remedy Project received from MDC Brooklyn this summer, we calculated that letters took an average of 15 days to reach us. Nearly one out of three took more than two weeks to arrive. One member, Vincent, told us he had sent six to nine letters, but only two had reached us. On August 3, he wrote, “it looks like MDC is stopping my mail.” Another member housed in the same unit reported that staff sometimes holds outgoing legal mail for two to three months. He described staff lying to incarcerated people that they had signed for mail they say they never received, asking, “if we did sign for it, why are we getting it a month or even sometimes two months later?” It has also been reported by an anonymous member that MDC returns properly addressed outgoing legal mail to courts as “undeliverable.” He says that MDC returns incoming legal mail from courts without notifying the intended recipient, who can only learn of the returned mail through family or friends on the outside. Vernon, who also suffered medical neglect, told us that MDC was withholding his incoming legal mail, making it impossible for him to access documents that are directly relevant to his ongoing legal proceedings. Along with physical mail, we have also heard of instances of MDC staff restricting access to TRULINCS, the online server incarcerated people can use to communicate with Bureau of Prison staff or loved ones on the outside.
Assault and harassment frequently occur within MDC Brooklyn, and staff routinely put incarcerated people in harm's way by hurting them themselves or knowingly placing them in dangerous situations. One of our members was moved to a unit with prominent gang violence, where he was then assaulted. After the attack, he was called to his unit counselor’s office, where he was asked to point out his attackers from a group. After identifying his attackers, he was then told to “get along” and return to the unit. His counselor intentionally put a target on his back by making him “snitch.” Another one of our members, Vincent, recently suffered two heart attacks and was taken to NYU Langone where prison staff wanted the hospital to perform surgery with no prep or advance notice to his family. When he refused the procedure and was discharged, he was sent back to MDC and suffered a severe anxiety attack. During this anxiety attack, he was beaten by 6 MDC officers. The Remedy Project has also received a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) case, which states that MDC Brooklyn staff have sexually assaulted a member through an improper and unnecessary strip search. Guard misconduct is not new to MDC Brooklyn, and the impunity officers are afforded allows them to continue a cycle of violence and abuse.
The Special Housing Unit (SHU) is where incarcerated people are held in solitary confinement for 22 to 24 hours a day in complete isolation, not to rehabilitate, but to demoralize. Through our correspondence, we have found that prison staff use solitary confinement excessively and unnecessarily as a punishment for anything they deem worthy. An anonymous Remedy Project member said he's been in the Special Housing Unit for 2 years because staff falsified disciplinary tickets in retaliation for his self-advocacy. Beyond the sheer isolation of solitary, unnecessary placement in the SHU sets back incarcerated individuals on their path to release or aid. SHU also makes it extraordinarily difficult to communicate with the outside world: family visits are inaccessible, email communication is cut-off, phone access is limited to 15 minutes per month, and physical mail is, in principle, unaffected, but in practice, is often interfered with. These constraints make it difficult in particular for The Remedy Project to support individuals in solitary or to learn details about the conditions in those units.
The physical conditions of confinement in MDC Brooklyn are widely recognized as atrocious and among the worst of federal prisons in this country. Through our members and conversations with their loved ones, we’ve received reports of dirty water in the ICE detention unit that detainees must boil in order to consume. We have received reports of numerous individuals that are being forced to sleep on disintegrating mattresses, including some that have reportedly been chewed up by vermin, torn into multiple pieces, and in such poor condition that one member reports “I’m literally sleeping on metal.” We have also been informed of crumbling walls, flooding inside cells, and mold in the cells. MDC Brooklyn staff have additionally refused to comply with dietary restrictions, putting people’s health at further risk. The overall conditions of MDC Brooklyn can without dispute be described as unsanitary, unsafe, and lacking the necessities anyone would need to live even semi-comfortably.
Retaliation is connected to each of these other concerns, and occurs at an alarming rate in MDC Brooklyn. Prison staff routinely retaliate against incarcerated individuals for exercising their rights by restricting their access to communication with family, writing discipline tickets, placing them in solitary confinement, denying them access to crucial medical care, and a number of other intrusive and violent acts. Remedy hindrance is another form of retaliation that directly impacts our work, and members have shared that Remedy Project communications are being blocked or delayed by prison staff to limit outside aid. The remedy filing process requires incarcerated people to follow an intentionally difficult timeline, and staff interference can make people miss deadlines and kill a potential case for relief. As an example, a Remedy Project member, Willie, was in solitary as a result of multiple disciplinary tickets that he was actively trying to appeal through the administrative remedy process. Prison staff responsible for delivering his appeals repeatedly failed to do so, and additionally assaulted him while still housed in solitary. When he was finally released from SHU, he was released into a unit with individuals that prison staff were aware he was in conflict with. He writes “I was later stabbed … 11 times and rushed to the outside hospital (… and received 39 stitches).” Afterwards, he was placed back in solitary, where he continued for months to be denied access to grievance forms, until he was eventually transferred to another prison. If incarcerated people are not able to use the very limited official avenues provided to them for reprieve without fear of retaliation, they truly have no opportunities to speak for themselves and exercise their basic constitutional, civil, and human rights.
Our members are not the only victims of MDC Brooklyn’s abuses–staff also harass their families and loved ones. We heard recently from two women visiting loved ones and one lawyer visiting a client that MDC Brooklyn’s visitation procedure was recently arbitrarily changed. All three of these women were denied entry to the facility because they were wearing underwire bras. One of these women had been coming to visit her boyfriend in ICE detention every week for nearly 6 months. She had never had a problem with her outfits before. She described that her bra would always set off the initial metal detector, but then a guard would do a secondary search with a wand detector and allow her to enter. Then one day it changed. The guard told her that they did not use the wand detector anymore, and that she had less than 10 minutes to leave, find a change of clothes, and return, otherwise she would be denied entry. This was the first visit she ever missed. Prison staff will claim that changes like this are to stop contraband or to protect the “safety and security” of the institution, but in practice, it is just one more way to punish and dehumanize detained people.
As we have cemented our connections within MDC Brooklyn these past few months, we have uncovered numerous inhumanities that incarcerated individuals and ICE detainees are suffering from. These are not isolated events, but a connected network of systemic injustices employed by MDC staff and the Bureau of Prisons as a whole to diminish the lives of those held in federal prison facilities. Our remedy writers are hard at work to address as many issues as possible, but much work still needs to be done to shine a light on the mistreatment happening inside of this federal facility. We are working closely with local organizations to spread the word, and encourage anyone interested in helping to sign up for our newsletter, become a national volunteer, and donate to our campaigns. We need your help, and so do our members at MDC Brooklyn!
For those interested in the New York area, The Remedy Project will be hosting a Town Hall at the Good Shepard Lutheran Church in Brooklyn on September 19th, 2026 from 5 - 7 pm to discuss our work this summer in greater depth, and expose these atrocities to the neighboring community. Please register with the form on this page, and we hope to see you there!
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