Advocates for closing Rikers Island, New York City’s sprawling 400-acre complex of notoriously dangerous and violent jails, have found an unlikely champion in Harvey Weinstein.

Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul whose fall set off the #MeToo movement with dozens of women accusing him of sexual misconduct, has been held at Rikers since a sex-crime conviction in New York was overturned last April.

Since then, his lawyers have lodged many complaints about his stay at the complex, petitioning the court to relocate him and filing notice they will sue the city over his medical care. Mr. Weinstein, 73, has personally spoken to the judge overseeing his case about his accommodations, which he called a “hellhole,” using his notoriety to draw attention to the troubled jail complex’s history of medical negligence.

Last week, as a retrial in his case got underway, his lawyers filed an emergency petition to move him to a secured unit at Bellevue Hospital Center. Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers have said he has diabetes, spinal stenosis and fluid on his heart and lungs, among other ailments. In September, he was hospitalized for emergency heart surgery. The next month, he was diagnosed with cancer.

The “mistreatment and mismanagement” of his conditions has become life-threatening, his lawyer, Imran H. Ansari, argued to a civil judge last week. The judge ordered that Mr. Weinstein be held at the hospital until this Thursday, when a hearing will determine if he remains there for the trial.