Jail Tech: Phones, Tablets, And Software Behind Bars

You’ve just been arrested for the first time. You’re sent to a holding facility where you’ll be detained until it’s your turn to stand before a judge. As you enter the facility, your iris is scanned and stored in the facility’s database. This is how you’ll gain access to every room for the duration of your detainment; it’s also how guards will make sure you are who you say you are as you’re moved from facility to facility.

- Juan Martinez

A bracelet is strapped to your wrist to continuously monitor your biometrics: Have you been fed? Have you taken your medication? Is your heart rate accelerating? Are you breathing? You’re strapped into boots with magnetic strips that can be remotely latched to the floor by a corrections officer. A metal collar is wrapped around your neck. This collar has only one job—if you leave the facility without permission, the collar explodes.

Like much of the rhetoric surrounding incarceration, the scenario I just described is a combination of hyperbole and fiction. Thanks to Hollywood and science fiction, it’s easy to imagine detention centers, prisons, and jails running the most advanced technologies known to humanity. In reality, most prisons are run on a simple combination of software, hardware, paper, and pen, nearly all of which require manual data entry.

“There’s a lot of hesitancy to provide technology to people in prisons,” said Christopher Grewe, CEO and Founder of American Prison Data Systems, a company that provides tablets to inmates. “You don’t become the leader of a correctional system by being great at technology. There aren’t a lot of people who understand technology very well. They’re a lot more comfortable buying pepper spray than they are in investing in technology.”