How Thousands of Security Cameras Forced Change at New York's Notorious Attica State Prison

In 1971, New York's Attica prison was the site of one of the most brutal and deadly prison uprisings in US history. After that, the facility gained a reputation for the iron grip its Correction Officers exercised over inmates, and the brutal beatings they imposed.

But following a 2015 trial of three officers for nearly beating an inmate to death, things began to change at Attica.

The change came about largely because of 2,000 cameras installed throughout the prison, according to a new report from The Marshall Project and Vice. John J. Lennon is a prisoner-turned-journalist who documented this change through the use of data, and from his own experiences gleaned in the nine years he spent at Attica.

Soon after his arrival at the prison in 2007, he could tell that Attica was different from other maximum security facilities. Guards walked around with their batons out, and the beatings of inmates happened nearly every day, he said.

"You would hear screams, you would hear yells," Lennon said. "After a while you became numb to it."

"What it does have that other prisons don't...is this horrible history," he said. According to Lennon, correctional officers had relatives and friends who'd been around at the time of the deadly uprising and were taught, "'you cant take your foot off the neck of these guys because if you do there will be problems.'"

But come 2016 the state was installing some 2,000 cameras across the facility and right away, Lennon noticed a change. Guards started to show restraint, while prisoners were emboldened.

Lennon's observation was backed up by data he obtained from the State Department of Corrections. In the year when cameras went up, the number of assaults on staff plummeted from 64 to 13 a year, the lowest number of assaults on record.

"There's never been 13 assaults on staff, in fact there's never been below 30 assault on staff," he said. "What the cameras do it's this sort of equalizer now."

Around 2,000 cameras have gone up across Attica, according to a spokesman for the state's Department of Corrections. They plan to install cameras in all maximum security, and some medium security, prisons across New York, the spokesman said.