News

Kiosks keeping prisoners in cells

May 25, 2011

Kiosks are providing prisoners with services at the Colorado State Penitentiary, which holds some of the most dangerous criminals in the state, according to Government Computer News.

The kiosks are designed to bring services to the prisoners instead of guards having to move them from their cells.

"These guys are locked up 23 hours a day," John Jubic, the Department of Corrections' end-user solutions manager, said in the story. "Any time we move these prisoners, it takes two to six guards to do it. That was the driving force behind what we are doing."

Via an IP network, the department is delivering basic services, such as TV, telephone and visitation services, to hardened kiosks in each cell. Each prisoner is entitled to some privileges, including virtual visits from visitors' centers outside the prison, tailored to the prisoner's disciplinary status. A high-speed network delivers many of those virtual visits to the cell without the risk or hassle of moving the prisoner, bringing visitors into the complex or delivering materials to a cell.

A server that links the department's Lightweight Directory Access Protocol directory to a prison management system is critical to managing access privileges at kiosks in prisoners' cells.

The RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server is "a single access point where the application gets all of its information," said Ulrich Schulz, a Radiant Logic systems engineer.

The virtual directory server creates a single profile from multiple existing resources, in this case a Novell eDirectory and Informix database used for authenticating prisoners and authorizing their access to in-cell services.

"We shield the complexity of different services, protocols and attributes from the application," Schulz said.