Anti-suicide plan in jail for Maxwell

Federal officials have put special protocols in place for Ghislaine Maxwell while she’s locked up, including giving her paper clothes so she doesn’t suffer the same fate as the man she allegedly enabled, Jeffrey Epstein.

The measures at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn highlight the importance of the Maxwell case at the highest levels of the Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department.

The feds took away Maxwell’s clothes and bedsheets once she was in custody, an official familiar with the matter told The Associated Press — and while she’s in custody, she’ll be in paper clothing.

In addition, officials outside of the troubled Bureau of Prisons are tasked with monitoring Maxwell (inset) to ensure she’s safe and that proper protocols are being followed. The protection is in case she harms herself — or other inmates want to harm her, according to the official. Other measures include ensuring that she has a cellmate — considered a vital move to prevent a prisoner from suicide. Maxwell is also supposed to have someone with her at all times while behind bars.

Many of those measures were absent when Epstein hanged himself at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan last year. Attorney General William Barr said a “perfect storm of screwups” allowed Epstein’s suicide to occur. Two correctional officers have pleaded not guilty to falsifying records and sleeping on the job the night he killed himself.

Epstein’s suicide only highlighted the ongoing dysfunction at the Bureau of Prisons, which is badly understaffed, overworked and coping with a major coronavirus outbreak at facilities around the country.

A hearing on whether Maxwell will be granted bail is scheduled for Tuesday. She is accused of enticing underage girls to travel for sex in the mid-1990s. Maxwell also allegedly participated in some of the sexual abuse.

She’s denied wrongdoing.