By Keaton Ross, Oklahoma Watch
Cynthia Butler’s anger evolved into activism after Amanda Lane died at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in February 2022.
The state medical examiner concluded that Lane, a 38-year-old prisoner serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, used a drawstring from a pair of shorts to hang herself in the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 2022.
But Butler, who served 13 years at Mabel Bassett before a federal judge overturned her conviction in 2000, said she started receiving reports from women at the prison that Lane was assaulted with no staff intervention before her death. Those claims were not addressed in the medical examiner’s report, though the investigator noted lacerations on Lane’s lower back and under her right eyelid.
Unsatisfied with the information she was receiving from the state, Butler started advocating for a transparency initiative that most police departments have adopted: Requiring corrections officers to wear body-worn cameras while on duty.
“If the prisons had body cameras on their officers, there wouldn’t be any speculation on what happened,” Butler said. “I know things can be misconstrued, and inmates aren’t given the benefit of the doubt. But I’ve seen a lot of things I wish I had never seen.”
Butler’s petition to require the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to implement body cameras garnered more than 3,000 supporters on Change.org. Less than three years later, the agency is all in on the idea, spending more than $1 million to deploy 1,069 devices across more than a dozen state prisons.
Correctional officers at state-run prisons began wearing cameras on Oct. 1. Staff at the Lawton Correctional Facility, the state’s largest and only privately operated prison, will not use the body cameras, though the state plans to take control of that prison, which is run by The GEO Group, next year.
The body camera rollout comes as the agency grapples with violence and allegations of staff misconduct at several prisons. In May, two prisoners died and dozens were injured after an operational error allowed a large fight to break out at the Lawton Correctional Facility, and the state is fighting a lawsuit from seven state prisoners who allege they were kept in small shower stalls at the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton for days without access to necessities.
On July 31, 2022, a prisoner at the then-privately operated Davis Correctional Facility fatally stabbed 61-year-old correctional officer Alan Hershberger with a homemade weapon. He was the first correctional officer killed on duty in more than two decades. The state overtook operations of the prison in October 2023 and renamed it after Allen Gamble, a correctional sergeant who was stabbed and killed by a prisoner in 2000.
Shad Hagan, a criminal justice reform advocate who worked as a case manager at the Dick Conner Correctional Center in Hominy, said he’s optimistic the body cameras will improve safety and accountability for staff and prisoners. While stationary cameras cover the prison, Hagan said blind spots and a lack of audio can make it difficult to piece together incidents.
“You may see an officer go up to somebody, but you have no idea what is being said back and forth,” Hagan said. “You can’t see what’s going on close up. It’s just a lot harder on the CCTV footage to discern what’s happening there.”
How the Cameras Work
The cameras, purchased from Arizona-based Axon, promise to provide clear audio of incidents and a failsafe option when officers don’t hit record.
The cameras begin recording audio when the officer hits record, including up to 60 seconds before the officer engages the device, corrections department spokesperson Kay Thompson said.
If an officer fails to activate the camera during an incident, video footage from the camera will be available during an 18-hour window, though the footage will not include audio. She said supervisor approval is necessary to delete or alter footage.
The agency’s body-worn camera policy lists several qualifying events when the cameras should be activated, including assaults, responding to an emergency call for assistance and interacting with agitated individuals. The cameras flash red while recording and green when powered on but not actively recording.
Body camera usage is unauthorized in several situations, including during unclothed searches, and officers may remove the cameras before using the restroom.
Long-Term Effectiveness Studied
Body cameras exploded in policing in between 2010 and 2015, as federal grants and public pressure for transparency motivated agencies to deploy the devices. Federal data shows 62% of local police departments used body-worn cameras in 2020.
But in prisons and jails, where staff aren’t armed and work in a more controlled environment, officials are still warming up to the idea that the devices might be worth the cost, said corrections expert Bryce Peterson with the Center for Naval Analyses.
While body cameras can complement surveillance footage and ease investigations, storing the video is expensive. There’s also limited research on the effectiveness of body-worn cameras over an extended period.
“We have one study that was done in a relatively small- to medium-sized jail,” Peterson said. “And those were very promising results. But will that translate to a prison setting? We don’t know the answer to that.”
That study, conducted by Peterson and several other researchers at the Loudoun Adult Detention Center in Leesburg, Virginia, from November 2020 to October 2021, found that use-of-force incidents and prisoner injuries declined when officers wore body cameras. Researchers also theorized that savings from fewer prisoner injuries could offset the cost of storing footage and maintaining the equipment.
Oklahoma corrections officials said serious incident reports declined by 40%, and Prison Rape Elimination Act complaints dropped 60% after body cameras were deployed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and Howard McLeod Correctional Center during a pilot program.
There’s also promise that the cameras could help Oklahoma crack down on contraband cell phone usage that has fueled extortion schemes at several prisons. While not the primary purpose of the cameras, Peterson said the technology is advancing to where future models might include signal detectors to alert staff when there’s a cell phone being used nearby.
Peterson said staff might also be deterred from bringing in contraband with surveillance ramped up.
“There is certainly some hope that if you implement body cameras and make sure staff are turning them on at all times, you will see a reduction in the amount of contraband in facilities,” Peterson said. “And if they do it, you can have good evidence. I saw footage from Ohio of a staff member smuggling in drugs and a cell phone into a prison, and they caught him right on his body camera.”
Despite the early success, some question the program’s long-term effectiveness if prison staffing shortages persist. The Department of Corrections added 11 correctional officers from June to August, according to information presented to the Board of Corrections on Sept. 25, but remains nearly 300 people short of its budgeted allotment.
“They’re not magic cameras,” said Bobby Cleveland, a former state lawmaker and executive director of the Oklahoma Corrections Professionals group. “They’re not going to replace officers.”
Butler, the prisoner advocate who pushed for body-worn cameras statewide, acknowledged that the devices won’t be a fix-all for issues facing prison staff and the incarcerated. But she’s hopeful the positive results seen in the pilot program will carry over to prisons statewide.
“It’ll stop a lot of crimes that are being committed in there,” Butler said. “It’ll make people be held more accountable for their actions. That’s what can be done with these cameras.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
