Kosher Inmates Are Only Getting Sardines In This Brooklyn Jail
Image by iStock
As temperatures begin to drop dangerously low, inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center have been going days without heat, warm water, or hot food. One kosher-observing inmate said he had only been given canned sardines to eat.
In a story broken by The New York Times, federal defenders said their phones were ringing off the hook with calls from terrified inmates, concerned for their survival. Benjamin Yaster, a lawyer at Federal Defenders of New York, filed court documents for his client Dino Sanchez, stating that “Mr. Sanchez has only been given the single, thin blanket he received upon intake. He has not been provided any additional blankets or clothing while the heat is out. Further, hot water has been unavailable for long stretches of time.”
The building next door to the jail, which is also owned by the jail, has full power and heat. Herman Quay, the jail’s warden, acknowledged that the building had temporarily been out of power, but did not acknowledge that this outage affected heat and hot water in the building, a claim which union leaders and lawyers denied.
MDC Brooklyn, which is home to both male and female prisoners of all security levels, was built in the 1990s. The jail last made headlines for being involved in a disproportionate amount of sexual assault cases involving female inmates.
Shira Feder is a writer. She’s at [email protected] and @shirafeder
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
-
Culture In Pope Francis, a voice for interfaith dialogue and against antisemitism
-
Fast Forward Israeli army fires deputy commander after finding ‘operational errors’ in killing of 15 Gazans
-
News Pope Francis, who advanced church’s relationships with Jews, dies at 88
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.