RF DC GOES TO PRISON

ID Cards Enable Death Row Inmates to make Canteen Purchases

When the State of Florida made the commitment to remove cash money from its 75,000 inmate population and still allow canteen purchases of food, tobacco, hygiene, and other products, it presented a unique challenge to the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) Bureau of MIS staff.

With 55 major correctional institutions located throughout the state and an average of six canteens per facility, the DOC decided to distribute the computing load of banking and inmate account control and “cashless” point of sale onto DEC VAX and Alpha platforms running VMS.

nmates are issued a one-piece, color photo ID card that contains an infrared-masked Code 128 bar code printed on either a Fargo Persona or a Kanematsu card printer, supplied and custom configured by NBS Imaging Systems. This ID card enables inmates to access up to $45 per week of their money (which is earned in prison jobs or sent in from relatives).

Purchases are made from a canteen window, run by an inmate operator. Inmates pass their ID cards through the window, and the canteen operator slides the card through a Welch-Allyn infrared slot reader. This reader is attached to a Compsee Quick-Link wedge unit, which is attached to a keyboard-less DEC VT-420 terminal.

Once the card is read, the inmate’s account is opened. The operator then picks the items called out by the inmate and scans the U.P.C. on the products using an Opticon SHT-1120/002R CCD attached to the Quick-Link’s RS-232 port. This arrangement, engineered for the Florida Department of Corrections by Compsee, allows for fast and accurate read rates with no contention between the slot reader and the CCD scanner.

When the inmate-customer order is complete (or the inmate runs out of funds), the account is closed and a receipt is printed on a CBM or Epson tape receipt printer.

A unique challenge arose when it became time to automate the canteen function at the Florida State Prison and the 360-cell Death Row building at Union Correctional Institution. The 1200 to 1500 inmates in these locations do not have free movement on a compound; however, as required by law, the Department of Corrections must provide canteen services to them.

Under the manual system it would take up to two weeks to process an inmate order because the process was very labor intensive. Our goal was to free the business-office professionals’ time, allowing them to work on other important projects, rather than to always be bogged down processing inmate canteen orders.

With a background in warehouse automation, I decided to apply some basic warehousing procedures to the process. As in warehousing, it is impractical to bring items to a stationary scanning device for data input into the system.

Likewise, it is also impractical to bring a potentially dangerous inmate to the POS terminal. We also needed real-time database update for inventory and account balances. With these basic requirements, the technology decision was easy-RF/DC. The implementation, unfortunately, was not simple.

To successfully implement this project, I proposed that we use an inmate operator to carry an RF terminal to each cell, scan the inmate customer’s identification card with an infrared pen to open his account, and then scan a 4-digit Code 39 bar code selected from a sheet of about 160 bar codes with item descriptions. A space is provided on the sheet next to the bar code for the inmate to write in the quantity of each line item desired.

After an item’s bar code is scanned, the operator would next scan a quantity bar code and then repeat the item/quantity scans until the inmate’s order is complete, or in many cases, until the inmate’s account runs out of money. Additional RF terminal screens allow for corrections to an order, reviewing of the order prior to order completion, or deleting an order.

Once the order has been completed, a receipt, which also serves as a pick ticket, is printed in the canteen pick area. Items are bagged by other inmate canteen workers and the receipt is attached to the bag and stapled shut. At this point, inmate runners carry the bags to the inmate customer’s cell, where the contents are checked against the receipt while in the presence of the inmate customer.

Narrowband Covers the Building

Since our multilevel prison buildings are constructed of very thick steel-reinforced concrete, we knew that spread spectrum would not be practical. In the half-mile long Florida State Prison building alone, we would have needed about 40 spread-spectrum RF transceivers to cover the building. An additional RF system requirement was that it interface to a DEC AlphaServer 1000 4/266 running Open VMS, but without TCP/IP (and also work well with our existing Progress database).

With all of the good RF systems available, it was difficult to make a selection; however, we found that the Teklogix narrowband solution fit our needs with the least amount of difficulty. By mounting a single antenna above the roof at the Florida State Prison and using a Teklogix 9130 Radio Link Controller and 9200 System Network Controller coupled by fiber-optic cable, we were able to provide full coverage of the building.

Hazardous Duty

We suspect that the RF waves originating from the antenna outside of the building must be traveling into the building through the prison’s many barred windows, providing the Teklogix certified coverage. Hats off to the Teklogix personnel who walked each and every prison wing to prove the coverage!

After the analysis was completed, the Department’s in-house software wizard, Garry Durden, took on the challenge to interface the Progress database with Teklogix’s VAX terminal handler software, writing the application in DEC C. Through the cooperative efforts of Teklogix and Durden, the terminal handler software was modified to allow access to the Progress database.

With this problem resolved, Durden was able to write an application that takes full advantage of the Teklogix 7025 handheld terminal’s large display. “We move large amounts of data to the screen during a single inmate-customer transaction,” Durden said.

Data returned after each item number scanned include the running account balance, running order total with tax, and last item and quantity ordered. A typical order contains 15 to 20 line items, and orders are taken about once a week.

In spite of the heavy flow of RF data, terminal response time is fast. Teklogix’s terminal handler combined with its 9200 System Network Controller allows for redundant screen buffering, minimizing RF data traffic. Additionally, the 64-bit DEC Alpha with Raid-5 Storage Works wastes no time crunching database transactions.

He have seen no evidence of degraded system performance, even while the warehouse is receiving items, the business office is updating inmate accounts, and six or seven walkup window canteens are all in operation with two RF terminal operators processing orders.

Canteen privilege is everything to an inmate. Each and every inmate takes seriously the importance of a smooth-running canteen system. The original cashless canteen pilot program was installed five years ago; the department has not experienced any intentional damage to any point-of sale equipment by an inmate.

Quick and accurate turnaround times in canteen-order processing keeps inmates from becoming restless, which in turn reduces any potential confrontational situations with correctional officers and other inmates.

Florida’s ever-expanding prison population presents new and difficult challenges to the dedicated correctional officers who are in constant contact with them. Almost daily, these brave professionals risk their lives to ensure the public’s safety. The cashless canteen system is an automated data collection technology tool designed to help make the correctional officer’s, and the inmate’s, environment safer than in the days when cash flowed freely on prison compounds.

Reprinted from:

Helmers Publishing