Arkansas Nursing Home Camera Laws: SB616 and What Applies Today

Arkansas has no statute or regulation giving nursing home residents or families a right to install a camera in a resident's room. A 2025 bill that would have created one, SB616, died without a floor vote. Two general Arkansas statutes do still govern what a camera in that room may capture. This page covers what current Arkansas law does and does not say, the bill's history, and the practical and legal risks of installing a camera anyway.

This page is part of our Nursing Home Camera Laws hub, which compares all 50 states, and our national Nursing Home Camera Laws guide covering the states that do have an enacted statute.

Arkansas Has No Statute Granting a Right to a Nursing Home Camera

Arkansas has not enacted a "granny cam" law of the kind roughly 17 other states have passed. There is no Arkansas Code section that grants a resident or their legal representative a right to install a camera or audio recorder in a nursing home room, sets conditions like roommate consent or notice, or bars a facility from retaliating against a resident who wants one installed. The Arkansas Department of Human Services' Office of Long Term Care administers the state's nursing home licensing rules, and a full review of those rules, including the Residents' Rights chapter, found no provision addressing monitoring devices, cameras, or recording equipment of any kind. Whether a resident can have a camera in their room in Arkansas today depends entirely on the individual facility's own admission agreement and internal policy, not on any statewide legal right.

The absence of a camera statute is not the same as an absence of law. Two general Arkansas statutes, one written specifically about photographing long-term care residents and one about secret video, apply to what a camera in that room records. Both are covered below.

SB616: The Bill That Would Have Created a Right, and Why It Failed

The Arkansas Long-Term Care Facility Resident Monitoring and Communications Act, Senate Bill 616, was introduced in the Arkansas Senate on April 3, 2025, by Sen. C. Penzo. It was read and referred to the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee the same day. According to the bill's official summary and legislative tracking, it would have established resident rights around electronic monitoring and communication in long-term care facilities, generally allowing a resident or their legal representative to install a camera or audio device in the resident's own room, and delegating consent procedures for residents lacking capacity, device standards, and the broader privacy and liability framework to Arkansas DHS rulemaking rather than spelling those details out in the statute itself.

SB616 never reached a floor vote. On April 16, 2025, the Senate committee withdrew it from committee, placed it on the calendar, and then recommended it for interim study, a procedural move that effectively parks a bill for further review rather than rejecting it outright. The 2025 Regular Session adjourned sine die on May 5, 2025, and the bill died with it. It was never engrossed and never became law. No evidence of a 2026 fiscal session or 2027 reintroduction has surfaced as of this writing, though the absence of a new bill number is not itself proof one won't appear in a future session.

Watch out: Do not treat SB616 as current law. It describes what Arkansas legislators proposed, not what Arkansas law actually permits or requires today. If it is reintroduced and passed in a future session, this page will be updated.

Audio vs. Video: Arkansas's General Recording Law Still Applies

Even without a nursing-home-specific statute, Arkansas's general recording law governs any camera or audio device placed in a resident's room. Arkansas is a one-party consent state under Ark. Code Ann. § 5-60-120: it is lawful to record a conversation if the person recording is a party to it, or if at least one party has consented, and unlawful otherwise. Unlawful interception is a Class A misdemeanor.

That framework covers a resident (or someone recording with the resident's consent) capturing their own conversations. It becomes murkier where a camera with audio also picks up conversations the resident is not part of, such as two staff members talking to each other, or a roommate speaking privately with a visitor. Neither of those parties has consented, and depending on the circumstances, that could implicate Arkansas's eavesdropping law separately from the resident's own right to record their own conversations.

A video-only camera, with no audio capability, avoids that particular problem, because § 5-60-120, like the federal Wiretap Act, reaches communications and not silent video. It does not put a camera outside Arkansas law altogether. Two other statutes reach silent images, and they are the subject of the next section. For the general mechanics of Arkansas's one-party consent rule, see our Arkansas recording law guide and its security camera page.

Two Arkansas Statutes That Do Reach an In-Room Camera

Ark. Code Ann. § 20-10-104, photographing a long-term care resident. This section sits in Title 20, Chapter 10, the same chapter SB616 would have amended, and it is the one Arkansas statute written specifically about capturing images of a nursing home resident. Subsection (a) provides that a resident of a long-term care facility in this state shall not be photographed without obtaining prior written consent from the resident or, in cases of incapacity, from the guardian or legal representative of the resident. Failure to obtain that consent before photographing a resident is a Class B misdemeanor under subsection (c).

Subsection (d) lists exceptions, and the one that matters most here is (d)(4): the section does not prevent a photograph by security cameras or other devices for the safety or security of residents. A camera installed for a resident's own safety has a real argument under that exception, and the resident's own prior written consent answers subsection (a) directly. The harder situations are a shared room, where the roommate is also a resident who has given no written consent, and a resident who lacks capacity where no guardian or legal representative has consented in writing.

Ark. Code Ann. § 5-16-101, video voyeurism. Subsection (a) makes it unlawful to use a camera, videotape, photo-optical, photoelectric, or other image recording device for the purpose of secretly observing, viewing, photographing, filming, or videotaping a person present in a residence, place of business, school, or other structure, or a room or particular location within that structure, if that person is in a private area out of public view, has a reasonable expectation of privacy, and has not consented. A violation of subsection (a) is a Class D felony. Subsection (a) has no sexual or prurient purpose element, and nothing in it turns on whether the device records sound, so a silent camera is squarely within its reach.

Subsection (d) carries its own exceptions, including (d)(2) for security monitoring operated by or at the direction of an occupant of a residence, and (d)(3) for security monitoring operated by or at the direction of the owner or administrator of a place of business, school, or other structure. A camera the resident themselves asks for, in the room that serves as their residence, fits (d)(2) far better than a camera a family member conceals without telling the resident, the roommate, or the facility.

How far these exceptions stretch in a nursing home has not been settled in Arkansas, and the safest path is the one that does not depend on them: obtain the resident's written consent (or the guardian's, if the resident lacks capacity), tell the facility in writing, and resolve a roommate's position before anything is installed.

What This Means in Practice

Because no Arkansas statute grants a resident a right to a camera or bans cameras outright, the facility's own admission agreement controls whether a device may be installed, while §§ 20-10-104, 5-16-101, and 5-60-120 govern what it may lawfully capture. Some Arkansas nursing homes permit family-installed cameras with written notice or a signed waiver; others prohibit them outright, citing roommate privacy, liability, or their own internal policy. Before installing any device:

• Read the admission agreement and ask the administrator directly whether cameras are permitted, and if so, under what conditions. Get any permission in writing.
• Get the resident's written consent, or the guardian's, before the camera goes in. That is what § 20-10-104(a) asks for, and it costs nothing to document.
• Address a shared room separately. With no statutory roommate-consent mechanism in Arkansas, a facility that allows cameras will typically still require the roommate's agreement or offer a room change, as a matter of its own policy rather than legal obligation. A roommate is also a resident under § 20-10-104 and a person with a privacy interest under § 5-16-101, so their position is a legal question as well as a courtesy.
• Consider a video-only device if audio consent from everyone who might be recorded, including staff and a roommate's visitors, cannot realistically be obtained. Dropping audio removes the eavesdropping problem under § 5-60-120, but it does not take the camera outside § 20-10-104 or § 5-16-101.
• Installing a hidden camera without facility knowledge carries both practical and criminal risk. A facility that discovers an undisclosed camera may treat it as a contract or policy violation, which can affect the resident's standing at the facility. Concealment is also the fact pattern § 5-16-101(a) is aimed at, and secretly recording a non-consenting roommate or a resident in a private area can be a Class D felony, silent video included. Any audio the device captures without a consenting party can separately expose the installer to criminal eavesdropping liability under § 5-60-120.

If You Suspect Abuse or Neglect

Camera footage, whether from a facility-installed system or a family device installed with permission, is sometimes the evidence that first reveals abuse or neglect. If footage or another source raises a genuine concern about how a resident is being treated, that is a different question from whether the camera itself was lawfully placed, and it may support a legal claim.

Reporting a Concern: The Arkansas Long-Term Care Ombudsman

Arkansas residents, families, and staff can raise complaints, including disputes over cameras, retaliation concerns, or suspected abuse or neglect, with the Arkansas Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, run through the Department of Human Services' Division of Aging, Adult, and Behavioral Health Services. The ombudsman advocates for residents' rights and investigates complaints at no cost to the resident or family, and its authority under the federal Older Americans Act covers assisted living residents as well as nursing home residents, regardless of whether a state has a camera statute.

Information last verified on 2026-08-31, drawn from Arkansas General Assembly SB616 bill records, the enacting acts for Ark. Code Ann. § 20-10-104 and § 5-16-101, the DHS Office of Long Term Care's nursing home rules, and Ark. Code Ann. § 5-60-120. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer and is not legal advice.

Related Resources

• Nursing Home Camera Laws by State
• Nursing Home Camera Laws: 50-State Comparison
• Arkansas Recording Laws
• Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect Claims
• Arkansas Power of Attorney Laws

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Last updated: 2026-08-31.