Pilot program to photograph prison visitors

ALBANY -- Prison officials plan to start photographing visitors to state inmates in a pilot program this fall at a facility in northern New York and possibly a few others.

Those pictures will be filed in the correction department's central visitor identification system.

Regulations to establish the practice in all 60 facilities housing 56,000 prisoners are expected to follow.

Separately, the department issued final regulations earlier this week to require adult visitors to present a photo identification starting Oct. 1 at all state prisons.

Signed identification documents without photographs have been acceptable.

-- AP