By Jose Medina
NEW YORK, NY – Recent information reveals more than 1,500 phone calls made from those incarcerated here were wrongly recorded, leading New York City public defenders to urge an end to all recordings of phone calls made by those in city jails, and for the city to not renew its contract with Securus, a prison communications firm.
The defenders group includes the Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, the Bronx Defenders, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, New York County Defender Services, and Queens Defenders.
The 1,500 wrongful phone recordings by incarcerated New Yorkers have put many potential court cases in danger of being compromised. This raised concerns about New York City jails’ intrusive 
practice of recording phone calls made by incarcerated people who rely on phone calls to communicate with their loved ones.
Noticing the substantial number of recorded calls, the public defenders stated that this issue is “impacting hundreds and possibly thousands of people who believed their phone calls were not being recorded and needed to have an open conversation with their legal representative.”
The attorneys saw this as a failure of the Department of Corrections for not taking the proper precautions to protect the constitutional rights of the incarcerated, given that “Securus’s system cannot be trusted despite significant evidence of these failing in New York and across the country.”
Aside from incarcerated people’s rights being violated, these recordings are also an infringement on their privacy, said the defenders, who highlighted this infringement by saying “even if legal calls were properly protected, conversations with family are intimate and should not be subject to surveillance.”
This surveillance also makes it difficult for public defenders to efficiently assist their clients, making it, said the defenders, “almost impossible to truly protect an incarcerated person’s rights when conversations are overheard and recorded.”
Incarcerated folks are already facing poor jail conditions exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, they “are isolated and afraid, facing unsafe conditions and few visits,” said defenders, adding “the impact of their own lifeline being recorded, monitored, and even overtly mocked by State actors, is unacceptable.”
They urged New York City to immediately end recordings and treat this as an urgent issue since incarceration and COVID-19 have been disproportionately affecting Black communities and communities of color.
The public defenders demanded that New York City not renew its contract with Securus, stating “there is no place for private for-profit services in our jails or prisons.”
New York City’s contract with Securus is scheduled to expire on March 31—with only a few days left before the expiration date, defenders have vowed to push requests to ensure all incarcerated New Yorkers’ privacy and rights are preserved.
Jose graduated from UC Davis with a BA in Political Science and has interned for the California State Legislature. He is from Rocklin, CA.
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