With U.S. Attorney Damian Williams having put the weight of the Justice Department behind the righteous push to have a federal receiver take control of Rikers Island and New York City’s jails, an extraordinary ruling the other day by a Manhattan federal judge called out the “dreadful” conditions in the jail the feds already run here.

There had been two federal lock-ups in the city until Manhattan’s hellish Metropolitan Correctional Center, a place that time forgot, abruptly closed down a couple months after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell.

That leaves the Metropolitan Detention Center, or MDC, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

It’s another filthy, badly run place with visible mold, contaminated drinking water and a vermin infestation.

A place where people awaiting trial and not yet convicted of anything are locked up for freezing winters and boiling summers along with people awaiting sentencing and those serving short sentences.

Where routine and urgent health care is “egregiously slow,” and women have been denied basic gynecological care. Where court orders for inmates to receive outside medical attention have been ignored, as though........

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