Manhattan Jail That Holds El Chapo Is Called Tougher Than Guantánamo Bay
The
Metropolitan Correctional Center, the high-security prison at 150 Park
Row in Lower Manhattan, has housed some of New York’s highest-risk
federal defendants.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times
Image
The
Metropolitan Correctional Center, the rust-colored fortress in Lower
Manhattan where hundreds of federal inmates are housed, was described as
less hospitable than Guantánamo Bay by one inmate who had been incarcerated at both.
The highest risk half-dozen inmates — or at least the ones facing the
most severe charges — are housed in conditions so isolating that some
have blamed them for deteriorating eyesight.
This
is where federal agents brought Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord
known as El Chapo, when he was extradited to the United States last week
after two escapes from high-security Mexican prisons.
The
Metropolitan Correctional Center, which held Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the
mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Bernard L.
Madoff, who orchestrated a $20 billion Ponzi scheme, has a reputation
for stringent security measures. Even so, several inmates over the years
have tried to escape, and a few have succeeded.
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The
most sensational attempt occurred in 1981, when an inmate was nearly
plucked off the rooftop recreational center by confederates in a
hijacked helicopter. And in 1990, two inmates disappeared out a
second-story window, lowering themselves with an electrical cord from a
machine used to buff the floors. One is still on the United States
Marshals Service’s list of most wanted fugitives.
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