Written by Peter Curcio
Ever since the arrest of Sean John Combs, aka “P. Diddy,” I have been inundated with questions from friends and associates about what he may be experiencing thus far in his incarceration. When the questions come in such volume, I find it better to memorialize things in one place and share the article as needed for a comprehensive understanding.
So here we go, into the conditions of confinement for prisoner #37452-054 currently residing in the “SHU” of Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center located in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Combs is in good company with MDC formerly holding the likes of other notorious rappers such as R. Kelly, Fetty Wap, Ja Rule, 6ix9ine, and even fallen Crypto billionaire, Sam Bankman-Friedman. The facility was built in the early 1990’s and while federal facilities are generally more pleasant to do time in then state or local lockups, MDC Brooklyn has been plagued with problems through the years with heat, violence and staffing issues.
A lot of the problems stem from its age and build as a vertical jail, the fact it is the only federal facility in the region and at full capacity, combined with the difficulty to hire federal custodial staff in the region, as they prefer to work in more affordable regions based upon low federal payscales.
Combs is obviously a high-profile prisoner and the facility and its warden, will do everything possible to make his stay as routine and uneventful as possible from a media and publicity perspective. The facility has a capacity for 1,188 offenders and houses both male and female offenders. In case you are curious about comingling, by design, Combs is to be separated from the female offenders in a different floor.
However, when you house male and female offenders at the same facility, my experience is bad things can and do happen. Case in point, several years ago, in the same facility, a female correction officer was convicted for sexual relations with one of the most heinous prisoners in custody and gave birth to his child, conceived behind bars.
MDC Brooklyn is a jail and not a prison. The main difference between the two being that jails house offenders either on trial or serving a term of one year or less while prisons house sentenced offenders serving sentences greater than one year. In general, jails are more volatile than prisons because the detainees are still being “institutionalized” and settling into substance treatment programs, identifying and treating mental health and medical conditions and working to set into a routine while working on their cases with hope and energy to win.
If there is a conviction and sentencing, the offenders move to prisons, in remote parts of the country, where there is a greater incentive for good behavior and early release, if permitted. While MDC Brooklyn may experience violent encounters among other prisoners, the facility will make sure there is limited exposure to Combs and while other prisoners may try to target him to make a name, there will be very limited opportunity for someone to harm him.
When P. Diddy arrived at the facility, he would have received no major preferential treatment other than being isolated for security reasons and processed alone. The processing would have been the same as with other new admission prisoners consisting of a strip search, bend and squat, confiscation of any personal items such as cash, clothing, and jewelry with the exception of a wedding band and a religious item as long as it did not contain diamonds or other precious stones.
He would then be given institutional clothing of same-colored pants and shirts, an inmate rule book, some poor-quality toiletries and would start what is known as the intake process. This would include a complete medical and phycological screening, issuance of a prison phone account utilizing voice recognition for security reasons, and the set-up of a commissary account which acts like a bank account through a system called Trulincs.
During the intake process, all new offenders get a tuberculous test and stay incubated for some extent for up to five days until they are medically cleared as not to spread communicable diseases. For Combs, this would likely have been in his Special Housing Unit, apart from other offenders.
He would also have been closely assessed for any suicidal tendencies which are considered higher risk among the newly incarcerated offenders. When Combs wanted to shave, he would be issued a disposable razor under supervision and then it would be retrieved. A correction officer will physically check his condition at intervals as frequently as fifteen to thirty minutes checking for “signs of life” of a chest rising or some other type of movement. If the officer on patrol does not detect minimal signs of movement, even when Combs is sleeping, it is not usual for staff to kick the door to awaken him to confirm the required sign of breathing.
The facility will continue to do its best to keep Comb’s stay out of the “funny papers.” No publicity is ever favorable related to the custody of a high-profile prisoner and no warden ever wants their name associated with high profile offenders which could be career ending. That translates to the facility doing their absolute best to prevent any self-harm to Combs as had occurred with Jeffrey Epstein in the nearby and now shuttered, Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan.
This means frequent cell searches, monitoring of visits, phone calls, emails, commissary purchases and money balances and they will rotate staff to prevent them from gaining a deep familiarity. Even this early in his stay, there are reports of Sean Combs using the phone time of other offenders and having his legal mail searched in violation of protected privileges. With a prisoner this high profile, I expect more of these types of issues hitting the papers if the judge doesn’t ultimately permit house arrest, which I don’t expect he will.
The general criteria around bail considerations are the probability of flight risk and with access and means and facing life in prison, I suspect his honor is considering Combs a significant flight risk.
From the prisoner perspective, it will obviously be a world apart from his lavish lifestyle but as unusual at it sounds, any fear and anxiety he may have had upon admission, will quickly be replaced with a somewhat comfortable routine. High profile prisoners, like Combs, do not mix with the general population.
He will be isolated by himself or with a few other high-profile offenders in a separate floor. He will avoid a congregate cafeteria and will have his meals brought right to his unit and possibly even his cell during lock in. He will receive three meals a day, the first will be about six in the morning and consist of cereal, milk, fruit and a piece of bread or cake. Lunch and dinner will consist of bland burgers, pizza, chicken and chicken patties and an occasional undescriptive fish. He can opt for either a special diet or religious meal through facility clergy or medical staff if he desires.
If Combs has an urgent medical need, a supervisor or medical staff can be summoned to evaluate if emergency medical services are required or if the medical need is less urgent, he can place himself on a sick call list to be seen the following day. Medical and mental health services are provided free of charge under constitutional law.
He will take showers alone under some type of supervision and he will be provided one hour of recreation daily, either directly in his housing unit or just outside, away from the other prisoners. The first few days of incarceration for any new offender is usually filled with trepidation and the expected fear of the unknown.
This is normal and comes from stereotypical prison movies where the new prisoner gets shanked upon arrival or beat up by staff. In most new offender scenarios, as the days go on and fears subside, a new routine takes place with the detainee and a realization that they are generally safe with exposure to support services, with newfound “star struck” offenders and custodial staff, medical and mental health staff alike.
Sometimes these relationships evolve into situations where boundaries are crossed and the gateway opens towards introduction to contraband drugs, cell phones and other illicit behavior. In jails and prisons there is a whole underground network of people on the outside, supplementing other prisoner’s commissary accounts and outside family members for some type of favor in the form of protection, drugs and cell phones and even secretly communicating messages through other people on the inside. This phenomenon is real and counter intelligence efforts are always afoot to try to stay one step ahead to prevent an embarrassment or catastrophe.
Combs will be entitled to visits that work off a rotating odd and even day system using the 5th digit of his inmate ID number. For security reasons he must approve all visitors that request to see him, and there is a limit to how many people he can visit with at one time and how many visits he can have per week.
The visits will take place at a small tables and chairs, away from other offenders for security reasons and in person contact will be permitted up to the point of kissing. The visitors will all be required to go through a metal search and pat frisk but not a strip search. The visit will be observed by visit security officers and would likely also be under video surveillance.
Legal visits do not count towards his visit number and can be just about every day, for his attorney of record, and cannot for legal purposes, be recorded or observed other than to manage the safety of the attorney. If Combs wanted to have a media visit, the media outlet requesting this would need the permission of Combs and with that permission, they can make a formal request to the Bureau of Prisons public information office and based upon the nature of the request, it could be in some circumstances be approved at the highest levels in the Bureau of Prisons.
It is unlikely however that a request would be made for a media visit in the trial stage and unlikely if it were, it is even more unlikely that it would be approved.
Combs will also have access to free calls daily from early in the morning to bedtime around 11pm and can only make calls and can’t receive them. Note that even though lights are out and lock in is around 11pm, most offenders stay awake until 1-2 am. If exceeding his quota for free calls, Combs can also use his inmate funds account to pay for calls or call people collect if they are willing to accept the charges.
The call would be from a wall mounted phone in a common area in the housing unit and not from his personal cell and would be activated utilizing voice recognition technology. If Combs identified the call as a legal call to his attorney of record, it would be verified and the call would be prohibited from being recorded. All other calls are both recorded and monitored. Many offenders try to speak in code or simply become complacent to the fact that calls are being recorded and say things that are later used against them by those that monitor.
There are ways around this privacy issue with offenders using contraband cell phones or going through other offenders as intermediaries. He also has the ability to send and receive email through the Bureau of Prisons Trulincs system, although all email is filtered and monitored and the cost could range from five cents or more per email through the secure email system.
Combs can get snail mail from anyone, but the mail is opened, searched and read, with any contraband items confiscated. The layperson would be astounded at how sophisticated the attempts are to introduce contraband through the mail. Combs will have an inmate commissary account but with a caveat working against this multi-millionaire, that he can only spend about one hundred sixty dollars at each commissary visit about once per week.
The account would be funded through either MoneyGram by a friend or family member or by sending a check to a BOP processing center in Iowa. While in the facility he can’t wear his Rolex or Louboutin sneakers but for $44 dollars he can purchase a Casio watch or pay $54 for a pair of Nike or just settle on a $3.65 jar of peanut butter and jelly. He can also replace his pedicures with a self-service toe nail clipper for $1.15. Most offenders supplement their three free daily meals with commissary items they keep in a bucket in their cell. If he has a desire to listen to his own songs, he can do so by purchasing a music headset through the commissary.
Overall, based upon my experiences, I expect that Combs will stay relatively safe from violence and assault while remaining at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility. I do however believe, at some point, he may gain access to a contraband cell phone, other contraband items and compromise some other offenders and possibly custodial staff who may come in contact with him as familiarity strengthens through constant contact.
If Combs is convicted and sentenced, at some point in his processing as a sex offender, he would be required to enter into mandatory programming consistent with any sex offense convictions. This would take place after he left MDC Brooklyn and was transported into the vast Bureau of Prisons network which would likely take him far out of New York State. In closing, we wish Combs a relatively uneventful stay while with the Bureau of Prisons and take a moment to thank all the unsung heroes in the correctional ranks who strive to maintain care, custody and control over the current 1.6 million people currently incarcerated in the United States.
---
Peter Curcio is correctional subject matter expert who presently trains senior corrections personnel and prison executives. He presently serves as President at Arrow Security, a national physical security company. Peter is a graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, holds a M.S. in Police Science from the University of Cincinnati and served as an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Briarcliff College.
Peter is the former Bureau Chief of Facility Operations from the New York City Department of Correction “Rikers Island” and is an F.B.I. Executive Fellow. Peter has over 39 years of correctional expertise and has previously managed a population of over 16,000 offenders, approximately 10,000 uniformed and civilian personnel. Peter also serves as Law Enforcement Today’s correctional expert and has been featured on MSNBC, Court TV and as a consultant for the prison themed television show “Necessary Roughness.”
Ever since the arrest of Sean John Combs, aka “P. Diddy,” I have been inundated with questions from friends and associates about what he may be experiencing thus far in his incarceration. When the questions come in such volume, I find it better to memorialize things in one place and share the article as needed for a comprehensive understanding.
So here we go, into the conditions of confinement for prisoner #37452-054 currently residing in the “SHU” of Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center located in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Combs is in good company with MDC formerly holding the likes of other notorious rappers such as R. Kelly, Fetty Wap, Ja Rule, 6ix9ine, and even fallen Crypto billionaire, Sam Bankman-Friedman. The facility was built in the early 1990’s and while federal facilities are generally more pleasant to do time in then state or local lockups, MDC Brooklyn has been plagued with problems through the years with heat, violence and staffing issues.
A lot of the problems stem from its age and build as a vertical jail, the fact it is the only federal facility in the region and at full capacity, combined with the difficulty to hire federal custodial staff in the region, as they prefer to work in more affordable regions based upon low federal payscales.
Combs is obviously a high-profile prisoner and the facility and its warden, will do everything possible to make his stay as routine and uneventful as possible from a media and publicity perspective. The facility has a capacity for 1,188 offenders and houses both male and female offenders. In case you are curious about comingling, by design, Combs is to be separated from the female offenders in a different floor.
However, when you house male and female offenders at the same facility, my experience is bad things can and do happen. Case in point, several years ago, in the same facility, a female correction officer was convicted for sexual relations with one of the most heinous prisoners in custody and gave birth to his child, conceived behind bars.
MDC Brooklyn is a jail and not a prison. The main difference between the two being that jails house offenders either on trial or serving a term of one year or less while prisons house sentenced offenders serving sentences greater than one year. In general, jails are more volatile than prisons because the detainees are still being “institutionalized” and settling into substance treatment programs, identifying and treating mental health and medical conditions and working to set into a routine while working on their cases with hope and energy to win.
If there is a conviction and sentencing, the offenders move to prisons, in remote parts of the country, where there is a greater incentive for good behavior and early release, if permitted. While MDC Brooklyn may experience violent encounters among other prisoners, the facility will make sure there is limited exposure to Combs and while other prisoners may try to target him to make a name, there will be very limited opportunity for someone to harm him.
When P. Diddy arrived at the facility, he would have received no major preferential treatment other than being isolated for security reasons and processed alone. The processing would have been the same as with other new admission prisoners consisting of a strip search, bend and squat, confiscation of any personal items such as cash, clothing, and jewelry with the exception of a wedding band and a religious item as long as it did not contain diamonds or other precious stones.
He would then be given institutional clothing of same-colored pants and shirts, an inmate rule book, some poor-quality toiletries and would start what is known as the intake process. This would include a complete medical and phycological screening, issuance of a prison phone account utilizing voice recognition for security reasons, and the set-up of a commissary account which acts like a bank account through a system called Trulincs.
During the intake process, all new offenders get a tuberculous test and stay incubated for some extent for up to five days until they are medically cleared as not to spread communicable diseases. For Combs, this would likely have been in his Special Housing Unit, apart from other offenders.
He would also have been closely assessed for any suicidal tendencies which are considered higher risk among the newly incarcerated offenders. When Combs wanted to shave, he would be issued a disposable razor under supervision and then it would be retrieved. A correction officer will physically check his condition at intervals as frequently as fifteen to thirty minutes checking for “signs of life” of a chest rising or some other type of movement. If the officer on patrol does not detect minimal signs of movement, even when Combs is sleeping, it is not usual for staff to kick the door to awaken him to confirm the required sign of breathing.
The facility will continue to do its best to keep Comb’s stay out of the “funny papers.” No publicity is ever favorable related to the custody of a high-profile prisoner and no warden ever wants their name associated with high profile offenders which could be career ending. That translates to the facility doing their absolute best to prevent any self-harm to Combs as had occurred with Jeffrey Epstein in the nearby and now shuttered, Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan.
This means frequent cell searches, monitoring of visits, phone calls, emails, commissary purchases and money balances and they will rotate staff to prevent them from gaining a deep familiarity. Even this early in his stay, there are reports of Sean Combs using the phone time of other offenders and having his legal mail searched in violation of protected privileges. With a prisoner this high profile, I expect more of these types of issues hitting the papers if the judge doesn’t ultimately permit house arrest, which I don’t expect he will.
The general criteria around bail considerations are the probability of flight risk and with access and means and facing life in prison, I suspect his honor is considering Combs a significant flight risk.
From the prisoner perspective, it will obviously be a world apart from his lavish lifestyle but as unusual at it sounds, any fear and anxiety he may have had upon admission, will quickly be replaced with a somewhat comfortable routine. High profile prisoners, like Combs, do not mix with the general population.
He will be isolated by himself or with a few other high-profile offenders in a separate floor. He will avoid a congregate cafeteria and will have his meals brought right to his unit and possibly even his cell during lock in. He will receive three meals a day, the first will be about six in the morning and consist of cereal, milk, fruit and a piece of bread or cake. Lunch and dinner will consist of bland burgers, pizza, chicken and chicken patties and an occasional undescriptive fish. He can opt for either a special diet or religious meal through facility clergy or medical staff if he desires.
If Combs has an urgent medical need, a supervisor or medical staff can be summoned to evaluate if emergency medical services are required or if the medical need is less urgent, he can place himself on a sick call list to be seen the following day. Medical and mental health services are provided free of charge under constitutional law.
He will take showers alone under some type of supervision and he will be provided one hour of recreation daily, either directly in his housing unit or just outside, away from the other prisoners. The first few days of incarceration for any new offender is usually filled with trepidation and the expected fear of the unknown.
This is normal and comes from stereotypical prison movies where the new prisoner gets shanked upon arrival or beat up by staff. In most new offender scenarios, as the days go on and fears subside, a new routine takes place with the detainee and a realization that they are generally safe with exposure to support services, with newfound “star struck” offenders and custodial staff, medical and mental health staff alike.
Sometimes these relationships evolve into situations where boundaries are crossed and the gateway opens towards introduction to contraband drugs, cell phones and other illicit behavior. In jails and prisons there is a whole underground network of people on the outside, supplementing other prisoner’s commissary accounts and outside family members for some type of favor in the form of protection, drugs and cell phones and even secretly communicating messages through other people on the inside. This phenomenon is real and counter intelligence efforts are always afoot to try to stay one step ahead to prevent an embarrassment or catastrophe.
Combs will be entitled to visits that work off a rotating odd and even day system using the 5th digit of his inmate ID number. For security reasons he must approve all visitors that request to see him, and there is a limit to how many people he can visit with at one time and how many visits he can have per week.
The visits will take place at a small tables and chairs, away from other offenders for security reasons and in person contact will be permitted up to the point of kissing. The visitors will all be required to go through a metal search and pat frisk but not a strip search. The visit will be observed by visit security officers and would likely also be under video surveillance.
Legal visits do not count towards his visit number and can be just about every day, for his attorney of record, and cannot for legal purposes, be recorded or observed other than to manage the safety of the attorney. If Combs wanted to have a media visit, the media outlet requesting this would need the permission of Combs and with that permission, they can make a formal request to the Bureau of Prisons public information office and based upon the nature of the request, it could be in some circumstances be approved at the highest levels in the Bureau of Prisons.
It is unlikely however that a request would be made for a media visit in the trial stage and unlikely if it were, it is even more unlikely that it would be approved.
Combs will also have access to free calls daily from early in the morning to bedtime around 11pm and can only make calls and can’t receive them. Note that even though lights are out and lock in is around 11pm, most offenders stay awake until 1-2 am. If exceeding his quota for free calls, Combs can also use his inmate funds account to pay for calls or call people collect if they are willing to accept the charges.
The call would be from a wall mounted phone in a common area in the housing unit and not from his personal cell and would be activated utilizing voice recognition technology. If Combs identified the call as a legal call to his attorney of record, it would be verified and the call would be prohibited from being recorded. All other calls are both recorded and monitored. Many offenders try to speak in code or simply become complacent to the fact that calls are being recorded and say things that are later used against them by those that monitor.
There are ways around this privacy issue with offenders using contraband cell phones or going through other offenders as intermediaries. He also has the ability to send and receive email through the Bureau of Prisons Trulincs system, although all email is filtered and monitored and the cost could range from five cents or more per email through the secure email system.
Combs can get snail mail from anyone, but the mail is opened, searched and read, with any contraband items confiscated. The layperson would be astounded at how sophisticated the attempts are to introduce contraband through the mail. Combs will have an inmate commissary account but with a caveat working against this multi-millionaire, that he can only spend about one hundred sixty dollars at each commissary visit about once per week.
The account would be funded through either MoneyGram by a friend or family member or by sending a check to a BOP processing center in Iowa. While in the facility he can’t wear his Rolex or Louboutin sneakers but for $44 dollars he can purchase a Casio watch or pay $54 for a pair of Nike or just settle on a $3.65 jar of peanut butter and jelly. He can also replace his pedicures with a self-service toe nail clipper for $1.15. Most offenders supplement their three free daily meals with commissary items they keep in a bucket in their cell. If he has a desire to listen to his own songs, he can do so by purchasing a music headset through the commissary.
Overall, based upon my experiences, I expect that Combs will stay relatively safe from violence and assault while remaining at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility. I do however believe, at some point, he may gain access to a contraband cell phone, other contraband items and compromise some other offenders and possibly custodial staff who may come in contact with him as familiarity strengthens through constant contact.
If Combs is convicted and sentenced, at some point in his processing as a sex offender, he would be required to enter into mandatory programming consistent with any sex offense convictions. This would take place after he left MDC Brooklyn and was transported into the vast Bureau of Prisons network which would likely take him far out of New York State. In closing, we wish Combs a relatively uneventful stay while with the Bureau of Prisons and take a moment to thank all the unsung heroes in the correctional ranks who strive to maintain care, custody and control over the current 1.6 million people currently incarcerated in the United States.
---
Peter Curcio is correctional subject matter expert who presently trains senior corrections personnel and prison executives. He presently serves as President at Arrow Security, a national physical security company. Peter is a graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, holds a M.S. in Police Science from the University of Cincinnati and served as an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Briarcliff College.
Peter is the former Bureau Chief of Facility Operations from the New York City Department of Correction “Rikers Island” and is an F.B.I. Executive Fellow. Peter has over 39 years of correctional expertise and has previously managed a population of over 16,000 offenders, approximately 10,000 uniformed and civilian personnel. Peter also serves as Law Enforcement Today’s correctional expert and has been featured on MSNBC, Court TV and as a consultant for the prison themed television show “Necessary Roughness.”
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