Kiosk Help Keep Track Of Prisoners On Probation

August 22nd, 2006 Davis Posted in Kiosks |

I’ve been a huge fan of the kiosk industry over the last several years. While the technology has been around for a long time, I believe that consumers are beginning to embrace self transactions on an unprecedented scale. Whether it’s the Southwest kiosks that save you time when flying or Redbox’s famous DVD machines, kiosks are the way of the future because they allow for low costs and high margin business opportunites.

In a unique development in the kiosk industry, Automon corporation has been offering a probation department kiosk for low risk offenders. It’s no secret that the prison system is broken. Considering that we’ve gone from about 275,000 inmate in the 1970’s to over 2 million prisoners today, it’s getting increasingly difficult to provide the rehabilitation and supervision that is necessary for the prison population. With many counties facing budget cutbacks and a booming prison population, the trend has been to grant probabtion earlier and earlier to inmates who prove themselves to be cooperative.

The problem is that once these prisoners go on probation there really isn’t adequate staff to keep a close eye on the entire probation population. This is where Automon steps in. They’ve developed a kiosk that is now deployed in 150 locations that allows a prisoner on probation to automatically check in, answer questions about their behavior and verify that they’ve been behaving with a virtual parole officer. The system itself uses fingerprints and palm prints to verify that the parollee is actually who they claim to be and then asks them a series of questions about what life has been like since they’ve been out. If a parole officer wants to schedule a meeting with the parolee they can notify them via the kiosk that they need to speak with them. The police officer is given detailed reports including who may have skipped their virtual appointment as well as who may have left the kiosk without answering some of the more difficult questions posed.

This is a great advancement in crime fighting in that it allows computers to deal with the low risk offenders and frees up time for parole officers to focus on their more serious cases. While some may criticize any form of automation with the parole system, the truth is that we are dealing with an over burdened system and I would rather have the low risk offenders checking in with a kiosk, then wasting valuable time that could be spent tracking the more serious criminals. Not only does this provide a new way of keeping track of the bad reformed guys, it also provides a lucrative revenue source in that agencies are allowed to charge $5 - $10 per visit from each parolee. While not everyone may agree, this is one of the more innovative uses of a kiosk that I’ve seen in a long time.