New York Prisons Are Getting More Cameras. Will It Make Them Safer?

Filed
12:00 p.m. EST

01.10.2026

The state plans to put in cameras in “blind spots,” following two high-profile prisoner deaths and in depth reporting about abuse by guards.

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Late final month, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislators struck a last deal on correctional reforms after a tumultuous 12 months in state prisons, marked by officers beating prisoners to dying and an unlawful guard strike.

One change within the regulation, requiring elevated video surveillance, may enormously scale back violence in opposition to individuals behind bars if absolutely carried out, stated Sean Chung, who labored as a janitor whereas locked up at Marcy Correctional Facility east of Syracuse.

“Cameras in infirmaries will likely be an enormous step that might lower down assaults,” Chung stated. “Infirmaries are the house base for assaults.”

Chung stated he needed to clear up blood, pepper spray, urine, and generally feces after guards beat up incarcerated individuals at Marcy’s infirmary.

The brand new regulation mandates steady 24-hour video surveillance in all areas the place guards work together with incarcerated individuals, together with infirmaries and all jail automobiles. The regulation requires prisons to get rid of all digital camera “blind spots” besides bathrooms, showers and inside cells.

The infirmary the place Chung labored for a 12 months, beginning in 2021, gained worldwide consideration in December 2024, after state legal professional basic Letitia James launched a video exhibiting White officers casually beating and choking a handcuffed Black man named Robert Brooks. He died the day after the beating. Seven former guards have been convicted in reference to Brooks’ homicide, two others had been acquitted, and one different is awaiting trial.

Marcy was not the one jail the place guards turned a spot of therapeutic right into a den of hidden violence. The Marshall Undertaking discovered that guards at different New York prisons usually assaulted incarcerated individuals in clinics, which lacked safety cameras on account of medical privateness issues.

After Brooks’ homicide, Hochul fired greater than a dozen guards and nurses, met with incarcerated males at Marcy, and put cameras on the heart of her correctional reforms.

Final January, Hochul proposed spending $400 million on fastened safety cameras. On the time, lower than 1 / 4 of state prisons had cameras put in all through the power. She additionally earmarked $16 million for physique cameras for all officers who work together with prisoners.

Then in February, correctional officers went on a 22-day strike in violation of their contract with the state. Hochul known as out the Nationwide Guard to assist workers prisons. Two weeks into the strike, guards killed one other incarcerated man, Messiah Nantwi, at Mid-State jail, down the street from Marcy, in line with prosecutors. Ten officers had been charged on this case, together with two with homicide. Prosecutors allege that not one of the Mid-State officers turned on their physique cameras as required by coverage, and that they beat Nantwi in three totally different areas, together with an infirmary.

In Could, the price range with the $416 million funding in cameras grew to become regulation. Simply earlier than adjourning in June, the legislature handed a sprawling corrections invoice that consolidated 10 pending jail payments altogether. After protracted negotiations, Hochul and legislators agreed on a invoice that may turn out to be regulation this 12 months.

Hochul instantly got here beneath fireplace from New York’s correctional officers’ union, which argued that Brooks’ homicide didn’t justify 24-hour steady video surveillance.

“We can not help laws that responds to a single tragedy by imposing broad, punitive oversight on 1000’s of devoted corrections professionals who had no function in it and who’re already beneath fixed surveillance and scrutiny,” the union stated in a press launch.

Whereas the union contends that Brooks’ dying was a single tragedy, The Marshall Undertaking and different information organizations have reported on systemic violence by New York jail guards for years: the division’s failure to self-discipline abusive officers, how officers thwart self-discipline, and the way most fired officers get their jobs again, alongside rising brutality and different homicides.

Many jail reform advocates have praised the growth of video cameras, in addition to an extension of the deadline for incarcerated individuals to sue the state for damages and civil rights violations. The previous statute of limitations was three years after the alleged incident; incarcerated individuals can now file lawsuits as much as one 12 months after launch from jail.

The drawn-out negotiations between the governor and lawmakers centered on the legislature’s try to alter the State Fee of Correction, an unbiased company with broad powers to research prisons and jails. In December, I reported on greater than 30 individuals in New York prisons who died of preventable or treatable well being situations. The fee is required to make sure prisons are “secure, secure and humane”, and it investigated the deaths. Nonetheless, fee experiences sometimes take a mean of two and a half years to finish, and supply restricted perception to the general public and households of the deceased. The experiences are closely redacted, and households should sue the fee to acquire an unredacted report.

Advocates have lengthy complained that retirees from regulation enforcement and corrections have dominated the three-member fee. The legislature tried to triple the variety of commissioners by including six individuals who had been previously incarcerated or had been skilled in public and behavioral well being. However Hochul restricted the change to 2 new members, a previously incarcerated particular person and a psychological well being skilled who will likely be appointed by the governor and can work part-time and with no wage.

Yonah Zeitz of the Katal Middle, which advocates for felony justice reform, stated Hochul will likely be accountable for the outcomes.

“Your entire oversight burden of reform now falls squarely on her shoulders as a result of she selected to not give the Meeting and Senate appointments,” Zeitz stated. “She’s now solely liable for what occurs with the fee going ahead.”