With it’s spate of polar vortexes and record-breaking temperatures, this winter has been especially torturous. But for inmates housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., these brutal conditions have officially crossed into inhumane. According to the New York Times, despite temperatures as low as 3 degrees Fahrenheit, over 1,600 inmates have spent the past week without heat or hot water. More than a thousand inmates have been stuck in freezing cells at a federal jail on the Brooklyn waterfront that has had limited power and heat for at least this week, according to federal public defenders and leaders of the union representing the jail’s corrections officers.
“They just stay huddled up in the bed,” said June Bencebi, a case manager at the jail and the treasurer of the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 500 corrections officers at the jail. The jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center, houses more than 1,600 inmates and lies in an industrial swath near the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Some inmates are linked to high-profile drug trafficking and terrorism cases, while others are comparatively anonymous New Yorkers awaiting trial.
READ MORE: The ROOT
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