By JD Mireles
New York prisons have a problem. Recent reporting has shown that guards are largely not disciplined for violently assaulting or killing incarcerated New Yorkers and fabricating evidence against inmates who file complaints. Carceral facilities across the state have been resisting public outcry against inhumane conditions by cutting access to camera feeds and attempting to ban incarcerated journalists from publishing their work.
So it makes sense why state legislators have recently proposed legislation that would require state corrections and parole officers to don body-worn cameras (BWCs). Unfortunately, just slapping BWCs on officers working in facilities already filled with cameras won’t make a difference. As long as the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) controls who has access to BWC footage and when, it will only be used to shield corrections officers from accountability and withheld from incarcerated New Yorkers challenging abusive conditions.
There isn’t much research on BWC use in prisons, but we can look to the widespread adoption of BWCs by police departments after the Ferguson uprisings for an idea of how it might go. Studies have found that BWC had no statistically significant effect on use-of-force rates or the amount of complaints filed against officers at police departments where their use has been adopted.
This is because when police departments are given more cameras, they’ll just use them to protect themselves. Officers don’t face repercussions when they turn off BWCs before violent interactions or “lose” the footage afterward. Criminal defendants, survivors of police violence, and oversight boards often face significant delays in receiving footage, if they receive it at all. For example, the NYPD failed to provide BWC footage for 40% of requests made in 2019 by the Civilian Complaint Review Board. The public has been told by various police departments that no BWC footage of an incident exists only to later see videos leaked to news outlets.
When videos are released, they’re often edited to exclude footage that makes law enforcement look bad. After the first NYPD shooting that was captured on BWCs, the department released an edited video that made the deadly use of force against mentally ill 31-year-old Michael Richards look justified. It wasn’t until a lawsuit was filed several years later that the full video was released, showing how police failed to render medical aid for a full three minutes after shooting Richards despite believing he was still alive.
BWC footage is also often biased in favor of officers, especially when officers are using physical force. Because it’s usually shaky, low quality, and does not film the person wearing the camera, footage can be misleading compared to bystander videos. Police and prosecutors can use this to their advantage, utilizing ambiguous BWC footage to justify officer accounts of violent encounters. Instead of allowing BWCs to serve as a tool for accountability, police departments have embraced them as a publicity tool—and that doesn’t stop the violence.
There’s no reason to think the situation would be different in New York’s jails and prisons. The proposed legislation kicks decisions about footage retention and privacy policies to DOCCS, which has previously allowed third-party phone vendors to collect biometric data on incarcerated people and record confidential legal calls.
New York State prisons are also already full of cameras, following multiple lawsuits over deadly beatings from corrections staff. It’s unclear how BWCs would add useful coverage to these preexisting camera systems. It doesn’t really matter, since corrections officers’ employment contracts with the state often protect them from being disciplined or fired, even when they permanently disable or kill someone.
Is it worth the cost to purchase, manage, and maintain the equipment required to sustain these programs? Large BWC manufacturers like Axon and Motorola stand to benefit from lucrative contracts by pitching themselves as effective solutions to abuse, all while diverting more resources into the prison system.
Ultimately, technology cannot solve these systemic issues. Adopting body cameras doesn’t change anything about the actual sources of violence and abuse in the carceral system. It doesn’t matter how many cameras you have pointed at a prison if guards can just turn them off or delete the footage. What good is collecting video evidence of violence against largely Black and Brown incarcerated people if corrections officer employment contracts prevent them from being fired?
BWCs will just be a costly tool for prisons to shield officers from consequences and manipulate facts against the incarcerated people they harm. We cannot film our way out of a violent prison system inherently designed to isolate and harm people.
JD Mireles is a legal intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and a student at NYU Law.