Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center is a maximum-security facility for the mentally ill on Wards Island in New York City,[1] operated by the New York State Office of Mental Health as one of two psychiatric hospitals in the state that treat felony patients.

[3] The Manhattan State Hospital was founded on Wards Island in 1899 as the largest psychiatric institution in the world.

[5] As of 2019, the state was planning to close the facility and move its patients to the nearby Manhattan Psychiatric Center.

The planned move was opposed by the clinicians' union and some of the facility's guards, as the Manhattan Psychiatric Center was not designed to house dangerous patients.

[3] Employees described the facility as a dangerous place to work;[3] in a two-year period before 2014, there were 433 assaults by patients.