This Call Will Be Recorded, Monitored, and Used Against You: The Harms of Prison Call Surveillance
Summary
In this report, S.T.O.P. details how the mass recording and automated analysis of jail and prison calls is built to fail incarcerated people by violating the right to a fair trial and by exposing incarcerated people and their loved ones to bogus criminal and gang accusations. The report documents how automated speaker recognition tools can misidentify speakers and how automated transcription tools are prone to misunderstand them, especially Black and Latino men.
Key Findings Include:
Jails and prisons have long recorded incarcerated people’s calls, but limited surveillance once spared most attorney-client conversations. Today’s mass surveillance sweeps them in routinely and inevitably, crippling incarcerated people’s ability to mount a defense.
Automated speaker recognition tools can misidentify who is on the line. Automated speech-to-text tools can misunderstand what’s said in jail calls, especially for Black and Latino speakers. The faulty record that results can be used against anyone on a call.
Keyword flagging strips callers’ words of context, so innocent speech can read as evidence of criminal activity. Adding AI doesn’t fix the problem and could manufacture false accusations at scale.
Data-sharing networks supply call data to law enforcement agencies across the nation, including ICE. Sanctuary jurisdictions like New York City cannot fully shield their residents.
READ THE REPORT
