Surveillance cameras now operating at San Quentin are coming to all of California’s prisons. But instead of the paranoia Winston Smith felt about mass surveillance in George Orwell’s “1984,” incarcerated people say they’re relieved Big Brother is finally watching.
Little black crystal balls in white casings now protrude from the corners of all buildings. They line the inside walls of the prison’s housing units. There are cameras in the yard, in education, vocation and even in the main kitchen.
Phil Phillips has been incarcerated for decades. He believes the cameras are essential.
“You would think it’s necessary to have them for us, but this is necessary for those who are supposed to be watching us,” he said.
It took more than a year to install the multitude of fixed audio and video surveillance cameras in the facility. They are now live.
“I think surveillance systems are a good idea; the U.K. has been doing it for a long time,” said 61-year-old San Quentin resident Gary G. Green. “Cameras don’t lie, they keep all the checks and balances, and they keep everybody honest.”
For centuries, prisons have been secret worlds ruled by violence and cultures of silence. Before surveillance cameras, guards walked the yards, watched from gun rails and used binoculars and flood lights to illuminate darkened walkways. Both guards and prisoners were able to commit brutal acts of violence in the shadows.
Alfonzo Landa was incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County before and after officers were ordered to wear body cameras.
“When I first got to Donovan, it was wild,” he said. “Correctional officers were tripping prisoners in handcuffs, breaking their arms and limbs. Incarcerated people were assaulting officers. There was this mentality like it’s us against them.”
Landa said he witnessed a mentally ill prisoner stabbing an officer. He also said he saw an officer choke a prisoner to death. But after officers started wearing cameras, violence subsided. Officers wear the cameras in the middle of their chest area to record every move of incarcerated people.
When asked how he feels about having cameras watch him all day, Landa said, “I don’t really care because I’m not doing nothing.”
In 2020, Senior U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered correctional officers at the Donovan prison to wear body cams due to abuse against disabled prisoners by the guards. The order was extended to five additional California prisons in 2021. Wilken wrote that this conduct violated long-standing class action agreements in the 1994 Armstrong v. Newsom case.
“Body cameras are likely to improve investigations of misconduct by staff and to reduce the incidence of violations of disabled inmates’ rights,” Wilken wrote in her legal opinion. “Some of the incidents involve the use of force against mentally or physically disabled inmates even though the disabled inmates appear to have posed no imminent threat to the safety of staff or other inmates.”
A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in early 2022 upheld Judge Wilken’s order, which will remain in effect for five years. The six prisons under the order include the Donovan facility near San Diego; California State Prison, Los Angeles County in Lancaster; California Institution for Women in Chico; California State Prison, Corcoran; Substance Abuse Treatment Facility also in Cocoran; and the Kern Valley State Prison in Delano.
Troy Dunmore served over two decades in prison and five years in San Quentin. He was re-sentenced and released two years ago.
“The cameras are a good thing because people need to see how their tax dollars are being spent,” he said. “I saw a lot of abuse during my time in prison. Officers get away with a lot and they should be held accountable for their conduct, just like anyone else.”
According to an ongoing lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, it was at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when California correctional officers – in riot gear, with their name tags covered – allegedly snatched 200 Black prisoners from their beds in the early hours of July 20, 2020. They brutalized the prisoners, slammed them against the ground and cell walls for nearly six hours. The incident allegedly happened at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad.
The officers are accused of sexually assaulting, punching, kicking, pushing down the stairs and placing prisoners in chokeholds and headlocks. But no video surveillance footage exists.
Plaintiffs Talib Williams and DiMario Pickford filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of the Black prisoners targeted in the alleged race-based raid. Among the allegations, officers were also accused of screaming “Black lives don’t matter!” while beating the men and exposing them to COVID-19.
According to an article published in the Marshall Project, hundreds of prison guard attacks on the incarcerated were documented in writing by New York state officials. However, when the state corrections department attempted to fire guards based on this evidence, it proved unsuccessful in 90% of the cases, as per their investigation. Surveillance camera technology may have led to a better outcome.
According to the CDCR, “The primary purpose of the audio and/or video recording technology is to have the ability to conduct after-the-fact reviews of audio or video footage.”
Former Secretary Kathleen Allison gave this written rationale: “The use of video/audio technology will assist staff to complete use of force reviews, decrease staff allegations of excessive or unnecessary force, and to help identify illicit activities.”
This new technology will be used in potential investigations of administrative, civil or criminal nature, involving felonious activities, use of force, riots, serious injuries or death. It will also be used to help obtain and preserve any potential evidence under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
The cameras do cause some concern.
Green said he is concerned about whether officers will pick up his conversations and interpret his words to incriminate him. Like the character Winston, Green believes that a form of “thought-policing” will result from this new audio surveillance.
Tony Tafoya wonders if his privacy and identity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community at San Quentin will be jeopardized by camera locations. One camera can peer into his cell and he can be seen using the toilet. There are also cameras near the shower area.
“I am concerned that the LGBTQ+ community may get placed on the internet,” Tafoya said. “I am also concerned that some overzealous officers are going to over-police and watch the cameras all day.”
What this new omnipresent government surveillance system means is yet to be seen. Will it be used to control like Big Brother, to break the spirit of the incarcerated, causing them to conform? Like Winston, most people in California prisons will likely become party followers, just as they were in the state of Oceania, recognizing there is no more secret world.
“l think everyone is going to change the way they do things,” said Landa.