New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced a $400 million investment into security cameras across all prisons in the 2026 budget following the killing of Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility in December. 

“We need to do more to make sure that every inch of a facility is covered in cameras,” she said in a recent interview. The investment includes $18.4 million to expand the state prison body camera program.

Some activists worry that additional surveillance tools will not equate to officers being held accountable. 

“When law enforcement controls body cams, they control the narrative, transforming these tools meant for accountability into tools of mass surveillance,” said Will Owen, the communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), in an email.

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) spent more than $600 million on a decadelong initiative to have full camera coverage across all its facilities. But according to a DOCCS spokesperson in a New York Focus report, as of January, only 11 of the state’s 42 facilities had full camera coverage. Crews are currently designing and installing new camera systems in 17 prisons. Though there are already 4,752 body cameras across all prisons in the state, Brooks’ death came very close to not being captured. 

On Dec. 9, 2024, multiple officers punched and kicked Brooks in the groin, abdomen, face, and back in the infirmary at Marcy Correctional Facility, where he was incarcerated. He died at a Utica hospital hours later.

Officers’ body cameras were on but weren’t set to record when Brooks was killed. However, the body cameras still recorded the incident. A video recall feature on the cameras recorded and stored up to 18 hours of silent footage as a fail-safe for missed evidence. The setting had been manually turned on by the camera’s administrators; it’s unclear whether the officers realized.

“Police [and other law enforcement officers] should never have the option to simply turn off their body-worn cameras when they don’t want an interaction to be recorded,” Owen said. “If these tools are ever going to work in any sense, they must fully cede that control to an independent third party.”

In the case of Brooks, New York Attorney General Letitia James released all the footage soon after her office obtained it. But in other instances, even when footage is captured, it’s not always made readily available to the public, and body camera footage is overwhelmingly more likely to be used to prosecute private individuals before it’s used to indict an officer.

Police have also been ramping up concerning uses for artificial intelligence beyond facial recognition, which has led to false arrests. Suffolk County in New York began piloting an AI system that scanned inmate phone calls for keywords in 2019. A Reuters analysis from 2021 of contracts and emails from across eight states shows that the tool was used to scan for the Spanish word for “lawyer” or accusations that detention centers were hiding COVID-19 outbreaks. Speech recognition algorithms also show the potential for racial bias. 

“These tools automate racial profiling and criminalize incarcerated New Yorkers’ loved ones on the outside, deepening the reach of police surveillance,” Owen said. “If Hochul’s plan continues to expand this sort of surveillance, it will only put more New Yorkers at risk of dangerous police interactions.”

Hochul’s office did not directly address critiques of the surveillance technology investment when Prism reached out for comment. Instead, her office provided a statement released previously in response to Brooks’ death being ruled as a homicide. 

“Those responsible for Mr. Brooks’ death must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, and I recognize the need to build an airtight prosecution to ensure those individuals are brought to justice,” Hochul said on Feb. 5. “The family of Mr. Brooks deserves no further delays.”

Hochul took several other critical actions that can open doors for third-party oversight. She called to expand the DOCCS whistleblower hotline, supporting anonymous tips from employees and incarcerated people. She also deployed $2 million to expand the DOCCS’ partnership with the Correctional Association of New York (CANY), which provides independent oversight of prison conditions. It is the only private organization in the state with unrestricted access to prisons.

CANY’s most recent visit to Marcy Correctional Facility was in October 2022, when the organization’s staff found numerous issues with food access, staff behavior, and the disciplinary process. People had problems accessing the prison’s dining hall. Several Black individuals said they were turned away from the dining hall for wearing their hair in cornrows or braids, and many reported being given only three to five minutes to eat. Incarcerated people at Marcy also reported fear of retaliation with the grievance process. 

CANY also found that Marcy’s Residential Mental Health Units were not following Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement (HALT) guidelines, which seek to restrict and reform the use of solitary confinement in New York. For instance, incarcerated people reported being held in solitary confinement for more than 15 days.

CANY’s oversight of New York prisons is critical in bringing conditions to light, though currently the association “lacks adequate funding for the essential services it provides,” said Sumeet Sharma, CANY’s director. With the state’s additional funding, Sharma said CANY plans to “hire additional staff, enabling us to conduct more comprehensive two-day monitoring visits, perform follow-up or spot-check visits regularly, and produce more resources for the public to better understand prison conditions.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor