[4] Opened in 1975 in the Civic Center neighborhood of Lower Manhattan,[5] MCC New York was the first high-rise facility to be used by the Bureau of Prisons.

[6] The jail was technically an extension of the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, to which it was connected via a footbridge.

[6] Numerous high-profile individuals have been held at MCC New York during court proceedings, including Gambino crime family bosses John Gotti and Jackie D'Amico, drug dealer Frank Lucas, Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernie Madoff, terrorists Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and weapons trafficker Viktor Bout.

[8] After being extradited to the United States, Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán was housed in the facility.

[11] Inmates in the 10-South wing are locked inside single-man cells 23 hours a day that are continuously monitored by CCTV cameras and have lights on at all times.

[citation needed] The wing has leaky plumbing that results in prisoners encountering pools of standing water and sewage, and it also has rodent and cockroach infestations.