Keeping tabs on the watchers: Device keeps jailers honest

Jan 1, 2001 12:00 PM, CAREY ADAMS

Feeling a little lazy, a guard working at a local jail decides to skip one of his required twice-hourly cellblock checks during the early morning hours. Within that period of time, a fight breaks out in the cellblock that puts the life of one of the inmates in jeopardy.

The officer swears to jail administrators that he made the required cellblock check. The jail has no evidence to dispute the word of the officer, and CCTV surveillance of the cellblock only scans the area within the inmate living quarters and cellblock activity area.

Jail administrators are at a loss about how to keep track of jailers as they make their rounds. The layout and interior of the jail makes it a difficult place to install certain scanning and reader devices. What tracking system would work best?

Jail administrators at the Hanover Detention Center in Wilmington, N.C., say they have a system in place to solve such problems.

Hanover uses a tracking tool the size of a hearing-aid battery called the iButton. IButtons can be carried by guards on key rings and are used to store and record information about the whereabouts of guards while on duty. The Ibutton, manufactured by Dallas Semiconductor, Dallas, can store the date and time when a jailer accessed an area within the jail.

Each jail administrator is assigned a key ring with their own serial code and a Personal iButton Recorder (PIR). Before the jailer goes on a tour, he touches the PIR with his key ring and is identified. As he goes throughout the facility, he holds the PIR up to wall-mounted iButtons, which record the time and date the jailer passed by a checkpoint.

The data is stored indefinitely by the iButton and can be downloaded from a computer connected to the system.

"We are very pleased with the system. It is a lot better than having to keep a written record," says Capt. David Stevens, chief jail administrator of the detention center.

Stevens says the system is useful at Hanover since the state of North Carolina requires jail guards to make two cellblock checks per hour. Hanover has a staff of 52 officers patrolling the facility and its more than 300 inmates in 30 cellblocks.

"We can check where each officer has been and if he has been making the required rounds," says Stevens. Hanover has been using the iButton system for two years. According to Stevens, keeping written records can lead to mistakes and can also lead to dishonesty.

"This system keeps people honest," says Stevens.

According to Kevin Arrowood of Technical Service Group, which helped install the iButtons in Hanover, the iButton is a simple product that takes little time to learn and it doesn't change the officer's daily routine.

"The only thing the jailer needs to know is that he carries the key ring, registers as a user, makes his rounds at the different checkpoints, and at the end of the shift, he downloads the information from the Personal iButton Recorder," says Arrowood.

According to Arrowood, the system also takes little set-up time. The fundamental components of the iButton system are the buttons, a PC, laptop or hand-held computer, and a layer of software to transfer information to and from the iButtons.

According to Stevens, the button is so small that some of his officers didn't believe the system actually worked.

"There was a disbelief that it could tell whether people were making their rounds. We had to take some people to task," says Stevens. "It was trial by fire for some to realize that the system works."

In the highly volatile world of corrections, keeping track of an officer's rounds can make life for the jail administrator a lot easier.

"You never know how valuable it is to have the right records until you get sued. A lawsuit against your facility changes things," says Stevens. "Without proper records, you don't have a defense, and you can't determine whether an officer was present. With this system, you have evidence and it can't be manipulated."

KeyTrak Inc., Oviedo, Fla., has found the iButton useful in the tracking of keys for all types of businesses. KeyTrak, a developer of key control systems, previously based its key tracking system on bar code technology. The bar code was attached to the key, and the user swiped the bar code when taking and returning the key.

According to KeyTrak, customers found that the bar codes wore off or could not be read. In addition, bar codes could not keep up with expanding key collections because bar codes did not provide a limitless numbering system to assign each key a permanent identification.

"We were finding that customers were frustrated with having to re-read the entire set of bar codes if one bar code did not work," says Mark Singleton, general manager of KeyTrak Inc.

The iButton has solved KeyTrak's problems. KeyTrak attaches the iButton to tags, which are attached to keys. Because it is small, up-to-date information can travel with a person or an object. The iButton can be written to or read by a special reader called a Blue Dot Receptor to give each key a permanent number.

"We called it a bar code with a brain. The iButtons tell us where a product has been, who has interacted with the product, and how long it has been since that person interacted with the product," says Singleton.

System users can simply extract information from the iButton, rather than having to go through lengthy bar code readings. Information is transferred between iButtons and PCs by a momentary contact with an iButton reader on the front of the PC.

The iButton has eliminated the frustrations for many of KeyTrak customers.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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