Say No To AI Video Surveillance of Cook County Jail
Tomorrow, the Cook County Board of Commissioners Technology Committee is set to consider a proposal from the Sheriff’s Office to obtain Briefcam for monitoring people incarcerated in Cook County Jail. If the Board approves the proposal, this dangerous contract could go up for a vote by the full Board as early as Thursday. The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice and 80 community, faith and policy organizations have sent a letter to the Board of Commissioners calling on them to reject this proposal.
Briefcam is video surveillance software powered by artificial intelligence. The technology uses facial recognition to purportedly identify people observed, document their activity, and flag suspected criminal activity. But due to privacy concerns and false positives which led to civil rights abuses, Briefcam has been banned by the French Supreme Court. In the United States, 15 states already have laws regulating the use of facial recognition technology; two, Montana and Utah, require a judicial warrant to deploy facial recognition video surveillance. The Illinois General Assembly is currently considering HB5521, which would ban the use of facial recognition for law enforcement and consequently make the use of Briefcam and similar technologies in the jail illegal.
Over the last several years, we have seen an increase in the number of people who have lost their lives while incarcerated in Cook County Jail. In 2022, the jail experienced its highest mortality rate on record, with more people dying while in the Sheriff’s custody than during the COVID-19 pandemic. These deaths have been the result of people not receiving timely medical care while overdosing, guards not being present during physical altercations due to cross watching, and violence from sheriff’s deputies and other incarcerated people.
It is clear that there are real health and safety issues behind the walls of Cook County Jail, but in order to address them, we must review the conditions of the jail, the procedures in place to respond to incidents of violence, and actions of law enforcement officials inside the jail. Such a holistic, transparent review is urgent in light of the facts that a Cook County Sheriff’s Officer has been charged with bringing lethal drugs into the jail and others are currently being investigated for homicide for the death of Martinez Duncan.
Like jurisdictions across the country, the Cook County Board will have to make difficult decisions about how to balance their budget in the wake of federal funding cuts, including how the County can fill gaps in the social safety net created by the Trump administration. Money that goes toward purchasing this dubious surveillance technology is money that could instead go toward filling the dire gaps left in essential human services that also contribute to safer communities.
The Cook County Board of Commissioners must reject the proposed purchase of Briefcam. Instead, we ask the Board to follow up on the 2024 hearing on deaths in Cook County Jail and review the Sheriff’s management of the Jail to explore effective, evidence-based mechanisms to protect the health and safety of people in the Sheriff’s custody that neither risk civil rights and privacy violations nor unnecessarily waste taxpayer dollars on software that may present new safety risks and expose those detained in the jail to great harm.
