By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project
The ACLU of Michigan recently put out an interesting report on surveillance cameras. Like other ACLU reports on cameras (such as those by our affiliates in Illinois and Northern California, and the materials on our national site) it summarizes the policy arguments against cameras. But it also focuses on a uniquely disturbing application of surveillance cameras: their deployment in residential neighborhoods.
In the picture-worth-a-thousand-words department, take a close look at this photograph that is included in the report:

Would you want to live there? And be subject to police monitoring 24 hours a day, seven days a week? I suspect most people would not like it if a live police officer were stationed on the sidewalk in front of their house, photographing their comings and goings at all hours. This is little different. As the report notes,
Today’s surveillance units in residential Lansing not only provide a 360-degree view of the area up to 500 feet, but also have zoom capabilities. Each day, the cameras engage in 24-hour viewing and imaging of the surrounding area utilizing high-definition color, night vision, and focus features that resolve minute detail in even the most severe environmental conditions. This means that the Lansing cameras give police the ability to read words on a piece of paper in someone’s hand within 50 feet, clearly discern a license plate that is 300 feet away, or recognize a face at 400 feet. Although the cameras are not monitored 24 hours a day, everything viewed by the cameras is digitally recorded and stored on hard drives for two weeks or more
There are limits placed on surveillance of private areas, but they are not adequate:
“Privacy zones”—defined by the LPD as windows of homes and other “non-public areas”—are not recorded. Still, while most private windows have been blocked from viewing, many front stoops and fenced backyards were only blocked after the ACLU’s recommendation to do so.
I spoke with Rena Elmir of the ACLU of Michigan and she told me,

The police feel that they’ve included sufficient safeguards by including that feature. Still, if you have a mailbox that’s at the end of your property line, the idea that a police officer could see whom you’re getting mail from using the zoom ability of the camera is worrisome. And just as easily as you can blur those areas, such as windows, you can disable that feature. The idea that this could be misused by police—even if it’s just one person, one bad apple—is pretty scary.

The ACLU of Michigan also had an independent researcher look at the impact of the cameras on the minority population. Comparing the representation of black residents to white residents, the study concluded that African Americans were twice as likely to be under camera surveillance as white residents. Concludes the report:

The disproportionate monitoring of people of color actually exacerbates the conditions that facilitate anger and resentment of law enforcement. In a society where many African Americans already feel profiled, installing surveillance cameras in their communities to constantly monitor their behavior only serves to heighten their sense of powerlessness and to foster mistrust of government officials…. One resident in an affected neighborhood expressed fear that when his grandson practices basketball on his driveway, the stranger on the other side of the camera would be silently judging him according to his own prejudices and stereotypes…. The installation of cameras has elicited negative responses from some African American residents, many of whom feel they are being viewed with suspicion as potential criminals. Their sentiments have been reflected in studies verifying that racial minorities are frequently targeted by camera operators in other communities “with a relish that impl[ies] a deep prejudice.”

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 12:54pm
In New York’s prisons, people caught with too many postage stamps in their cells can land a stint in extreme isolation – the harshest possible punishment in the state prison system.
Extreme isolation – locking one or two people in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day under conditions commonly understood as solitary confinement – should never be a disciplinary tool of first resort. In fact, the cruel and ineffective practice should be eliminated all together.
The New York Civil Liberties Union just concluded an intensive, year-long study of New York’s use of extreme isolation, described in a report released this week, Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons.
Over the course of our investigation, we communicated with more than a hundred people who have spent significant amounts of time in extreme isolation. We interviewed prisoners’ family members and corrections staff and reviewed thousands of pages of official records obtained through open records laws. (A companion website excerpts of prisoners’ letters about life in extreme isolation, a library of DOCCS data and records, statistical analyses and a video featuring the voices of family members whose loved ones have been held in extreme isolation.)
We found that the state’s use of extreme isolation endangers prisoners and corrections staff. It undermines prison safety and, ultimately, makes our communities less safe.
Individuals in extreme isolation spend at least 23 hours a day in a cell about the size of a parking spot.  They are deprived of all meaningful human contact or mental stimulation. “Recreation” is an hour in an outdoor cage like a kennel. Phone calls are prohibited. Meals arrive through a slot in the door. There is no access to educational or vocational programs or rehabilitative services.
As punishment for simple misbehavior, such as not promptly returning a food tray, people can be further deprived of basic necessities like nourishing food, showers or toilet paper.
About a third of the roughly 4,500 New York prisoners in extreme isolation are “double-celled" with another prisoner. Double-celled prisoner are locked up together — showering and defecating in front of each other —for weeks, months and even years on end. This practice commonly results in violence and often can be more psychologically debilitating than standard solitary.
Ceaseless isolation and deprivation causes grave psychological and emotional harm, including severe depression, rage and uncontrollable impulses.  Corrections staff receive few resources to safely manage individuals buckling under the stress of extreme isolation or its effects once they return to the general prison population.
Last year, the state doled out more than 13,500 extreme isolation sentences – about one for every four people incarcerated. Just over 8 percent of New York’s prison population is in isolation at any given time, the vast majority for non-violent offense, such as selling chewing tobacco, testing positive for marijuana, and yes, for having too many postage stamps, which are considered contraband.  Only 16 percent of isolation sentences from 2007 to 2011 were for assault or weapons.
What happens in our prisons can seem remote, but the use of extreme isolation affects all New Yorkers. Each year, 25,000 people are released from New York's prisons. Thousands will have spent time in extreme isolation.  About 2,000 people are released directly from isolation to the streets. They receive no transitional programming before their release to support a productive return to society.
Our report lays out sensible reforms that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision could initiate immediately to make our prisons and communities safer. First, DOCCS should establish clear and objective standards to ensure prisoners are separated only when necessary, under the least restrictive conditions and for the shortest time possible. Then DOCCS should audit the current population in extreme isolation, identify people who do not belong there and return those prisoners to the general prison population.
These reforms would bring an end to a disastrous and unnecessary decades-long human rights crisis in our prisons, and put New York where it belongs: at the vanguard of smart and effective criminal justice reforms that both improve public safety and reaffirm our state’s commitment to human dignity.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/life-box-inhumane-and-unsafe-extreme-isolation-new-yorks-prisons