Sean 'Diddy' Combs incarcerated: Bed checks, monotony and jailhouse lasagna

New York: Sean Combs' hair and beard, once jet black, are gray now. Hair dye is not allowed at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Breakfast is at 7 a.m. The exercise room has yoga mats and a small basketball hoop. The communal space in the dorm-style housing he has been assigned has pingpong and television. There is phone access that has allowed him to speak to rapper Ye and also to his children who, on his 55th birthday, serenaded him on speakerphone.

"Thank y'all for being strong, and thank y'all for being by my side," Combs said in a video released by his family.

The Brooklyn jail has drawn complaints over the years as a place filled with mold, vermin and neglect, which the Federal Bureau of Prisons has pledged to address. For nearly seven months, its most famous tenant has been Combs, who is awaiting trial in circumstances far removed from the life of personal chefs and enormous mansions he once enjoyed.

The music mogul also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy is facing years in prison if convicted on the racketeering and sex trafficking charges he faces when his trial begins next month. His lawyers argued strenuously after his arrest in September that Combs should be free until trial.

Motion after motion, and three hearings, were devoted to arguments over whether he posed too much of a threat to the community -- and of witness tampering -- to be released on bail.

Three judges decided he did, so Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, has been forced to make do at the long-troubled facility that houses more than 1,100 inmates and is beset by a reputation for attrition among its guards and violence within its walls.

The government has depicted Combs in court papers as the boss of a violent criminal conspiracy that committed kidnapping, arson and drug crimes, while enabling Combs' sexual abuse of women.

Combs' lawyers have asserted that the charges actually center on consensual sex with long-term girlfriends. The defense has acknowledged that Combs has had "complicated relationships" with significant others, as well as with alcohol and drugs, but has argued that those troubles do not "make him a racketeer, or a sex trafficker."

As he prepares for trial, Combs has been staying in an area of the jail known as 4 North, a fourth-floor unit where roughly 20 men are housed.

The unit tends to hold high-profile inmates, including, until recently, Sam Bankman-Fried, a cryptocurrency mogul who was convicted of fraud. Other common detainees in 4 North are government informants, such as former gang members the government wants to separate from the general jail population.

When Combs was first arrested, his lawyers expected that he would be assigned to the jail's Special Housing Unit, a restrictive designation that typically means spending 23 hours a day inside a cell.

The conditions in 4 North are far more lenient.

Gene Borrello, a former inmate who said he was placed there because he helped the government convict members of the Mafia, said that when compared to other units in the jail, "you have nothing to worry about."

Inmates are generally free to move around the unit, which has rows of bunk beds, televisions, a microwave and the room where inmates have in the past worked out on mats with exercise balls, Borrello said. There are multiple compulsory check-ins each day at one's bunk, overseen by correction officers.

The bathroom has stalls, and inmates take meals at tables inside the unit's common area, said Borrello, who was last housed there in 2023.

Inmates do not have access to the internet, but they could watch movies and listen to music on tablets that were available for purchase in the commissary, he said.

Previous high-profile occupants of the unit include Genaro García Luna, a former top law enforcement official in Mexico, and Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras. (Luigi Mangione, who shares a lawyer with Combs, is awaiting trial from the same jail but is not housed in the same unit.)

Bankman-Fried, who is appealing his fraud conviction, was in the unit with Combs until last month, when he was transferred. Shortly before his relocation, Bankman-Fried spoke in a video interview with former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who asked about Combs.

"He's been kind," Bankman-Fried replied, later adding, "It's a position no one wants to be in. Obviously, he doesn't. I don't. As you said, it's kind of a soul-crushing place."

Combs meets with members of his legal team frequently, sometimes in a conference room off the common area of his unit. He was provided a laptop without Wi-Fi -- at his lawyers's urging -- to work through the mountain of evidence that prosecutors have turned over before trial. He can use the laptop between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. each day in the unit's visiting room or in a room reserved for inmates to take video calls.

The trial in US District Court in Manhattan is expected to last about eight weeks. Opening statements are scheduled for May 12.

Inside the detention center, located on the Brooklyn waterfront near a recycling facility, male pretrial inmates wear brown jail clothes. There is a rotating food menu: The second Friday of the month, for example, brings lasagna and, for the vegetarians, "pasta fazool," as well as spinach and salad.

The commissary stocks snacks such as Snickers ($5.95 for a pack of six) and Cheez-Its ($3.65), as well as toiletries and other items such as radios and watches. Inmates are allowed to spend up to $180 every two weeks, using money that family and friends can funnel into their commissary funds.

Packets of mackerel, known as "macks," operate as a kind of currency between inmates; they are on sale at the commissary for $1 each.

For Combs' unit, visitors are allowed on Tuesdays. Phone calls are capped at 15 minutes each and can be monitored by the government. A leaked clip of Combs' call with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, included snippets of Combs' encouraging Ye to make new music and promising to call again.

"Fifty-nine more days before trial, so I'll definitely be touching in, to tap into your energy or something," Combs said in the recording, before remarking on how "sad" his current situation was. "I'm Puff Daddy in jail," he lamented.

Brad Rouse, a consultant to criminal defendants who landed at the Brooklyn jail on drug charges in 2008, spent a year in a dormitory-style unit one floor below where Combs is staying. The difference between communal living and isolation is vast, he said.

"Just being able to interact, play chess and talk makes all the difference in the world," Rouse said.

For years, defense lawyers have objected to the conditions at the Brooklyn jail, which has taken on more of a burden since the closure of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in 2021.

Last year, a federal judge described the conditions in the Brooklyn facility as "grim," citing complaints about extended lockdowns, understaffing and delayed medical care. Federal prison officials said they have been working to address the complaints and take their duty to protect its inmates and staff seriously.

Combs' lawyers have not publicly taken issue with living conditions in 4 North, but they have objected to government monitoring of his communications and a search of his personal notes that were kept inside the unit.

Last year, prosecutors said that during a preplanned sweep of the jail meant to uncover "potential corruption and contraband," an investigator took photos of some of Combs' personal notes. They included innocuous material such as a reminder of a family member's birthday and inspirational quotes, along with notes that the government argued were evidence that Combs was trying to obstruct the prosecution, including one that related to him directing someone to find "dirt" on two alleged victims.

"The evidence shows the government is using Mr. Combs's detention to spy on him and invade his confidential communications with his counsel," the defense wrote in court papers.

Prosecutors defended the search as within the law but said they would not use any of the notes in their case against Combs. A judge ruled that his rights had not been violated.

The dispute provided a small window into Combs' communications from jail.

According to prosecutors, Combs bought the use of other inmates' phone privileges by directing others to pay into their commissary accounts; on some of those calls, they said, he strategized about using public statements to affect the potential jury pool's perception of him. They also said he has tried to contact potential witnesses through three-way calling, which allows him to reach people outside his approved contact list.

Prosecutors said Combs organized the video later posted to his Instagram that shows his seven children wishing him a happy birthday, with Combs on speakerphone. After it was posted, prosecutors said, Combs -- long known for his attention to marketing -- monitored the post's analytics from jail.

"The defendant has demonstrated an uncanny ability to get others to do his bidding -- employees, family members and MDC inmates alike," the prosecutors wrote, referring to the Brooklyn jail.

The defense says Combs' communications from jail are far from nefarious. His modes of communicating, including by tapping into other inmates' allotted minutes, are widespread practice, his lawyers argued. They asserted that Combs was not trying to obstruct the prosecution, saying repeatedly that he intends to face the charges against him head-on.

The stakes are high. Combs has been arrested several times before but never spent any significant time in custody during those cases. Now he is approaching his eighth month. If convicted, Combs will face the possibility of spending the rest of his life in federal prison.