Article

Bad guys get good technology as kiosks go behind bars

Overtaxed corrections facilities receive a helping hand as kiosks are sent to jail. The machines handle everything from legal research to counting down a convict's sentence.

March 25, 2004

Kiosk companies are going behind bars to do business, heralding the self-service revolution to correctional institutions. And the solutions are aimed at helping a growing number of the nation's 2 million prisoners do legal research, make medical appointments and find out how much money is in their prison account to buy chips and smokes.

Correctional personnel are welcoming the innovations with open arms.

Ever since courts ruled that governments must grant prisoners access to legal research, corrections officials have struggled with the cost and effort of maintaining a library of expensive, easily stolen or destroyed law books. Touch Sonic Technologies Inc. of Santa Rosa, Calif., developed sturdy kiosks for prisoners to access legal information from the research firm LexisNexis.

The two companies formed a partnership and supplied the machines on a pilot basis to correctional facilities in California and Hawaii. They come with a touchscreen pad designed so that even computer illiterates can use it with ease. To address safety concerns, the screen is shatterproof. Not even a crowbar could crack it, according to company officials.

Machines strike chord with prison staff

Five Riverside County, Calif., jails are in the test phase, and the electronic research system has made some good first impressions.

Capt. Alan Flanary, who runs the jail at Indio, said inmates had been using a computer CD system for research, but even it had drawbacks. Keyboards could be ripped off and potentially used to harm staff or other inmates, and staff had to update research by plugging into the hard-drive each quarter.

What's Important Law requires corrections facilities to provide prisoners with access to legal research. Typical access is set of costly, easily damaged books that are quickly outdated. Kiosks provide constantly updated information and access to other prison admin needs.

By contrast, he said LexisNexis constantly updates its own information. And there are no keyboards because the touchscreen kiosk is securely mounted to a durable surface.

"The new system seems to work just fine," Flanary said.

The service also gets thumbs up from Harry Fuchigami, librarian at the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua, Hawaii.

"The prisoners who have tried the kiosk use it quite frequently and most became experts in just a few minutes of use," Fuchigami said. "I use the system myself because it's much easier to look up statutes using the touch screen than it is with our books."Touch Sonic began business three and a half years ago, carving a niche among the law enforcement community. Its first major kiosk solution was placed in the Santa Rosa Police Department. It dispensed information about police department and other city services to local residents.

Then the company hit upon the idea of the legal research information kiosk for prisons and jails. "We knew that without a legal-data partner, we'd have no product," said Jack Long, Touch Sonic's vice president of marketing. LexisNexis responded enthusiastically.

"Until now, prisons had no option but to spend huge sums purchasing law books, which involve administrative costs, are subject to vandalism, and become quickly outdated," said Bill Carter, vice president and managing director of LexisNexis.

"Now they can meet the legal research needs of inmates in a cost-effective way. We have seen great success with our installments in California and Hawaii, and plan to roll out this combination of hardware and legal information to corrections facilities nationwide."

Washington uses AutoMon's expertise to install prison kiosks

Meantime, a Scottsdale, Ariz., kiosk solutions company is building on its experience serving the law-enforcement community to enter the corrections segment as well.

Until recently, AutoMon Corp.'s claim to fame has been kiosk solutions for parole-and-probation reporting programs in 15 states. Many of the kiosks use a biometrics identification system.

Now it's branching out, developing new self-service solutions to bring information more quickly to the inmates in the Washington state prison system, said company president Tom Jones.

"Within a prison there is a lot of administrative stuff going on," Jones said. For example, inmates make doctor appointments and ask staff to determine how much money is in their canteen accounts. They also ask the staff to help calculate how many days they have left to serve.

The prison kiosk solution promises to unburden guards and administrative staff assigned to handle the constant barrage of requests made by the inmates.

The Washington Department of Corrections uses about 70 AutoMon kiosks for its field offices serving parolees and probationers, saving the state time and money.

Low-risk offenders routinely use the kiosks to check in regarding their current addresses and employment status. Harrison said that's cut down drastically on the onerous paperwork besetting the parole officers.

It didn't seem such a giant leap to adapt the new technology to prisons, he said.

"Inmates are entitled access to a vast amount of information which must be delivered to them directly by staff in a manner that precludes the possibility of other inmates intercepting the material," Harrison said. "The task of delivering this information falls to staff throughout the facilities, diverting them from providing other essential services."

Challenges remain, however. Harrison said the bugs are being worked out on how to physically install the kiosks in a prison setting, and how much cost will hit the state.

"Connectivity is a big expense in prisons," he said. Data drops in areas that require core drilling, and pathways and pull boxes can cost up to $15,000.

The field units have kiosk cabinets built with inmate labor by prison industries. Kiosks in those field offices are observed by staff and don't require a great deal of security.

"Prison is a drastically different environment for kiosks and will require them to be `hardened.' We have commissioned a security consultant to address this and other issues," he said. "The results will be incorporated into the project plan, and will influence the cost of the project."

Harrison hopes the kiosks will be in place by year's end. They would serve 16,000 inmates housed in state prisons.