Corrections Community

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department operates jail facilities located throughout the County of Los Angeles, which encompasses more than 4,000 square miles. Currently, in order to visit an inmate incarcerated in the jail system, family members must transport themselves to the facility where the inmate is located and wait in line for an opportunity to visit, which is not guaranteed in the “first-come-first-served” system. In some cases, families, including young children, must travel nearly 100 miles, arrive very early in the morning and wait in line for hours, never being sure they will even get to visit their loved one. A visit scheduling and reservation system would guarantee their visiting time and eliminate long waits in line. A video visiting system would allow them to visit an inmate located at a remote facility, from a local facility, or even their own home, eliminating long drives. Based on this, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department is exploring the possibility of obtaining grants funding to implement this project. Does anybody know of any grant sources that might fund such a project? Thanks in advance for your assistance. (This could have positive implications for ADA, Traffic Reduction, Mothers/Fathers with Children, the Elderly, etc.) Also, does anybody know of available systems, or vendors, that provide these capabilities?

Hi Ray, The Ada County Sheriff's Office (Boise, Idaho) is also looking toward this type of technology. I had been communicating with Don Jeanson there @ LACSO. We are very interested to find info about Internet based systems that would allow visitation from the visitors home, library, etc. We are currently talking with a software developer about the idea, but have nothing on the burner yet. If you come across something would you please share? Thanks! Mike Laky

The video visiting proposals put forth by LA and Ada County would be huge steps forward in visiting and reverse what at times seems to be a trend toward making visiting more inconvenient.  Both counties are to be commended.

 Bill Collins

Attorney at Law

Co-editor, Correctional Law Reporter. 

Ray (and others) I forgot to include info yesterday about the Singapore Prison System. They have been doing "tele-visits" for years now. Rather than elaboate in the thread I'll post the links ... We have not had much luck getting a response from them to discuss how they did this. Note, when I pulled up their sign on link a message popped up that informs they are discontinuing the visit from home service come 2009 ... hmmm ???? Mike http://www.apcca.org/Pubs/news15/Singapore.htm http://www.prisons.gov.sg/televisit.html http://www.prisons-hometelevisit.gov.sg/home/

Mr. Maifield, please call me at 913-897-2194. We have been planning to develop a jail-to-home or jail to satellite location system for video visitation. Thank you. Dave Johnson, PLLC

Yakima County has been using video visitng in one of our facilites since it opened in 2006, we are currently in the RFP process to switch over all of our facilites to video visiting. Are funding source has been identified as comming from Inmate Trust. Michael D. Williams, Chief Yakima County Department of Corrections

Please contact me regarding video visitation. We can be a cost-efficient provider of this service if we can get a grant to finish developing it. Thx. Dave Johnson 877-897-2194

Who are the major players in CCTV and Video Visitation Technology for corrections? I own the #1 search result for Intensive Use Products and I am looking for a new CCTV provider to work with.

We use VuGate.

 http://www.vugate.com/

 Mike

I'm with Bill. I think this would truly be a big step in the correction direction.

It breaks my heart how difficult they make it to see loved ones in some states.

wow, with the use of this technology we can make everything faster and more efficient.

Renovo Software is a large player in this arena as well. www.renovosoftware.com. They have a completely IP based system that uses non-proprietary, off-the-shelf components in the stations that allows visits from remote locations. Behind the scenes, they have software that can register visitors and schedule visits (online, over the phone, in person and at a kiosk), manage policies/restrictions, and digitally record all visit. They have some of the largest installations of video visitation in the US. Definitely worth checking out.