State Sen. Cris Dush, R-Brookville, speaks during a Senate committee meeting earlier this year.

Manned overwatch towers may soon be required when inmates are moving around outdoors.

State Sen. Cris Dush, R-Brookville, recently introduced legislation (SB 1304) that will require any correctional facility in Pennsylvania that has an overwatch tower be manned when inmates are being moved outdoors. The bill does not require new overwatch towers to be constructed in facilities that don’t have one, and if existing overwatch towers don’t provide oversight of inmate movement they wouldn’t have to be manned.

“In our correctional institutions, overwatch towers play a crucial role in security,” Dush wrote in his co-sponsorship memorandum. “They provide a vantage point where an officer can safely watch prisoners and ensure the safety of their fellow staff and the inmates. Many correctional institutions are attempting to pivot away from overwatch towers towards cameras. As a former corrections officer myself, it is obvious to me that these two methods of observation are not equal…”

The bill comes a year after a murderer made a brazen escape from a suburban Philadelphia jail yard by scaling a wall, climbing over razor wire and jumping from a roof in a breakout that wasn’t detected by guards for a full hour. Video showed 34-year-old Danelo Cavalcante standing in a passageway next to the jail yard before bracing his hands on one wall and his feet on another then “crab-walking” up the walls out of the camera’s view. The tower guard on duty when Cavalcante escaped was placed on administrative leave after the escape and later fired. Another inmate at the same prison escaped the same way earlier in 2023. The earlier escape was foiled more quickly after a tower guard sounded an alarm. Cavalcante was eventually caught after two weeks on the run.

There were four escapes from Philadelphia-area jails in 2023 alone, while the Warren County dealt with the escape of Michael Burham as well. Dush’s bill wouldn’t affect the Warren County Jail, which doesn’t have an overwatch tower. But, Dush’s co-sponsorship memorandum called into question the use of cameras in facilities that often rely on technology rather than corrections officers to monitor inmates.

“Cameras may not be actively monitored at all times. Watching all cameras at all times can be particularly difficult if there are multiple feeds and monitors to watch,” Dush wrote. “Cameras are susceptible to technical issues such as power outages, smudged lenses, computer glitches, and varying video quality. A camera does not have the presence that an armed officer does and cannot act as a deterrent in the same way. Most importantly, a camera cannot respond to an immediate threat, if one were to present itself. Consider a scenario where an inmate draws a concealed weapon to attack another inmate, threatening their life. When a scenario is life or death and the seconds count, having an officer nearby is that difference between life and death.”