meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has recently received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent Application Number US16/386,248 entitled “System and method for controlling, monitoring and recording of wireless telecommunications services in penal institutions.” This is our sixth patent overall and the fifth in this family of patents.

A notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and is pending issuance.

This sixth patent, combined with our recently allowed blockchain patent, further expands our Secure Prison Cell Phone Solutions™ intellectual property portfolio and further solidifies our position as the prime innovator in the prison mobile device space. The claims in this latest patent are directed toward expanding the use and functionality of an inmate mobile communications device as well as the network systems that support its deployment and functionality.

The control systems of mobile devices used in correctional facilities are currently focused on the monitoring and recording of inmate usage and application access. However, these devices can be used to monitor more than just the individual activity and communication of the inmate in possession of the device. The devices themselves can be used to monitor the broader correctional facility environment and its detainees. This new functionality provides unique security, safety and investigative capabilities to the administrative personnel of prisons and jails.

Brian Byrne, Managing Partner of meshIP, LLC commented, “With this sixth patent, we now have intellectual property which covers six key aspects of secure wireless inmate communication systems – system, application, device management, device security, blockchain enabled wireless service and now investigative environmental monitoring. We are the only inmate communications services company with the intellectual property portfolio protecting these six core elements of the now mainstream inmate mobile device market.”

Update: The patent (US10,764,757) was issued on September 1, 2020 by the United States Patent Office. You can view the patent here: Sixth meshDETECT patent.

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meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has recently received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent Application Number 16/517620 entitled “Systems and Methods For Blockchain Wireless Services In a Controlled Environment.”

A notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and is pending issuance.

This fifth patent expands our Secure Prison Cell Phone Solutions™ intellectual property portfolio and further solidifies our position as the prime innovator in the prison mobile device space by leveraging the security, efficiency and decentralization offered by blockchain technology. The claims in this latest patent are directed toward voice and video call validation, decentralized voice and video call recording, and smart contract enabled inmate financial transactions. This patent is the intellectual property foundation of Aisto®, our new blockchain powered inmate mobile device solution.

In the traditional telecommunications systems of correctional facilities, the administrative costs involved in call and video recording as well as associated metadata are limited by the number of communication kiosks in the prison. This number is typically small and therefore makes it reasonable to maintain such administration via a single conventional, centralized computing center, whether located on-site in the correctional facility or in a remote site. However, as the number of these telecommunication devices and the complexity of the system increases with the introduction of mobile devices, such as tablets, to prisoners, the cost and complexity involved in capturing recordings, metadata and monitoring permissions increases significantly.

Blockchain technology deployment in a multi-path wireless network can apportion the requirements of a telecommunication system across many distributed nodes. Blockchain will therefore the reduce the burden on the processing, network, and storage systems of a correctional facility. By enabling the mobile devices within a prison as blockchain and multi-path wireless network nodes, not only can much of the computing requirements be offloaded from a facility’s centralized systems, but the facility can safely and securely maintain the same control and oversight as previously available.

Transaction record-keeping, recording and regulation of inmate device use may be distributed, with security and computing power increasing as a system grows. By implementing a blockchain ledger among mobile nodes via a mesh network in the closed system of a correctional facility, not only is the computing power and network access distributed across these nodes, but the control and records of any transactions within a system may also be distributed and replicated. This structure promotes redundancies and fail safe options not previously available in the traditional centralized architecture.

A distributed blockchain system creates a more permanent and unalterable record than a single database could, while allowing more nodes to function simultaneously. Distributed systems promoted by blockchain technology combined with mesh networking provide correctional facilities the potential to distribute management of the system by giving the nodes the ability to regulate themselves anonymously from each other but transparently to those administering the correctional facility. Not only can more devices be supported, but they can be supported with fewer resources, enhanced redundancy, and increased security.

Blockchain may also reduce the costs of running a secure network, which is important in publicly funded institutions such as correctional facilities. Because blockchain verifies trustworthiness, a centralized server does not need to handle this task. The friction of transactions is reduced, promoting cost and time savings. Key benefits of this system include providing for the wireless communication device to record a voice or video session instead of at the central database, allowing inmates and their families to schedule and pay for voice and video calls via a smart contract, as well as allowing nodes on the network to validate and control permissions, rules and transactions.

Brian Byrne, Managing Partner of meshIP, LLC commented, “With this fifth patent, we leverage the blockchain to enhance the key benefits and mitigate the major challenges of the growing role of mobile devices in correctional environments. There continue to be many industry announcements regarding inmate tablet deployments in prisons and jails, but we believe we are the first and only inmate communications services company innovating on the blockchain to secure and manage these inmate mobile devices. This patent is an important addition to our existing intellectual property which covers the four essential pillars of secure wireless inmate device deployment and management – system, application, device management and device security”

Update (6/24/20): The patent (US10,694,032) was issued yesterday by the United States Patent Office. You can view the patent here: Fifth meshDETECT patent

Update (12/15/20): meshDETECT was awarded its second blockchain patent and seventh patent overall on 12/1/20

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In July, 2018 the UK’s Prison and Probation Service issued a report that detailed the findings from research that looked at the demand and use of illicit phones in prisons. The report explores the use of smuggled mobile phones in prison in considerable detail, contrasting the views of prison staff and prisoners themselves on why and how prisoners increasingly use mobiles inside prisons.

The aim of the research was to understand what drives the demand for illicit phones by prisoners, what type of prisoners are more likely to want an illicit phone, and to help identify methods that are potentially effective to reduce the supply and demand for illicit phones.

Unique in this report is the effort to identify and address not only the supply side of the contraband prison cell phone equation, but also the demand side drivers.

The varieties and types of  cell phone use by prisoners is captured in the figure below, followed by a description of the different user types identified. The report states, “The typology has been constructed on the basis of a synthesis of the qualitative material and it should be noted that the sample of prisoners interviewed was biased to higher risk prisoners. The synthesis has sought to capture the relative importance of different types of drivers of mobile phones as reported to the researchers, primarily by the prisoner sample. Figure 2 illustrates the typology, providing an indication of the relative importance of the various drivers of use as reported by prisoners, represented by the size of the circles. The overlaps between the circles of different types of users are intended as an indicator of crossover between groups in patterns of motivation and use. The size of the circles is not intended to denote the size of particular groups of mobile phone users; this cannot be deduced from a piece of qualitative research.”

Mobile phone user typology:

Family man
Profile: Partnered/with children. Includes very young fathers, but has older bias.
Motivation: Close to family, contribute as parent from inside, be part of family life.
Usage style: Text and voice. Discreet – aim to retain phone on sustainable basis.
Risk: Low, little cross-over with other aspects of prison economy.
Impact: Sustained relationships. Positive for resettlement/desistance.

Girlfriends/sex talk
Profile: Young men with and without partners.
Motivation: Relationships and intimacy, female company, control, sex, entertainment –presence in outside world.
Usage style: Primary focus text, voice, some picture sharing. Can be discreet – somesharing within close associate clique.
Risk: Medium, some crossover with drugs, some access to restricted numbers.
Impact: Positive for personal relationships and some diffusion of tension/aggression.Some potential for continuation of damaging controlling relationships, relationships with criminal associates.

Economically driven/opportunists
Profile: Multiple sentences, experienced or longer term prisoners.
Motivation: Cost savings and convenience. Some to sort affairs on entry to prison.
Usage style: Text and voice. Mix of phone owners/renters, some occasional use.
Risk: Medium to low. May be some crossover with running external criminal business.
Impact: Medium, some potential for debt, exposure to intimidation and stress.

Display/Rebel
Profile: Young males, testosterone/display-driven, multiple prison terms, often gang-related.
Motivation: Status and build reputation inside/outside prison, display physique, boast to external audience, maintain presence outside world, kick against system.
Usage style: Text and voice, images key, social media.
Risk: Medium to high: some crossover with drug/mobile trafficking, harassment of witnesses/victims, continuation of gang agenda.
Impact: Negative impact on victims/witnesses, impact on reputation of prison service, glamorising negative behaviours/gang cultures – but short-lived.

Dealers
Profile: Dealers in drugs/mobiles or both, both inside prison and, in some cases also running external drug business. Some local gang connected, some OCG links.
Motivation: Financial gain, status, continuation of criminal lifestyle – also used for personal and family communications but primary driver criminal business.
Usage style: Text and voice. May have dominant position in landing hierarchy. Phone typically held by associates or third party, typically weaker, potentially vulnerable prisoners.
Risk: High. Risks to security and good order, central to the illicit prison economy, continuation of external criminal business activities.
Impact: High. Disorder and volatility, debt, intimidation, violence, extortion, both internally and externally to families, potential risks for victims and witnesses and external associates.

Vulnerable holders
Profile: Weak individuals with little status intimidated into holding phones for more powerful and connected prisoners.
Motivation: Fear of more powerful individuals and potential consequences of not agreeing to look after phone. In some cases ‘quid pro quo’ of being able to use phone to contact own family.
Usage style: Often not used personally, in some cases limited text and voice.
Risk: Low risk, primarily to individual if phone detected and confiscated by authorities.
Impact: Secondary effect, primary impact associated with phone owners. Some risk to holders (of debt, retaliation, sanctions) if phone detected and confiscated.

Serious Organised Criminals (SOC)
Profile: Experienced lifestyle criminals, present as ‘model prisoner’.
Motivation: Continuation of criminal business activity, minimise personal exposure to risk and length of time in prison, minimise personal discomfort/restrictions within prison regime.
Usage style: Full functionality device, minimal personal use, maximum deniability, device carried/stored by associates, highly conscious of targeting and intelligence powers.
Risk: Very high – drug dealing and trafficking at scale, risks to witnesses and perversion of course of justice.
Impact: Very high – continuing of scale criminal business has ongoing negative impact on public.

Conclusions:

Regarding the types of contraband prison cell phone users, the report goes on to conclude , “There appeared to be a significant body of mobile phone users for whom the drivers of demand were essentially social and human rather than criminal and for whom the impact of mobile phone use was largely positive, not only in enabling individuals to maintain meaningful relationships with family and loved ones but also in increasing motivation for compliance and desistance. The primary social driver in these cases appears to be prisoners’ deep desire to maintain relationships with loved ones, with the legitimate phone system often being a poor fit with their communication needs and the realities of family lives, partners’ working hours and children’s activities. From the prisoners’ accounts, this appeared to be the most important driver of demand for mobile phones.

Clearly there is a degree of crossover between the criminal and social drivers. Nonetheless, for many prisoners using mobile phones primarily or solely for communications, the social use of mobile phones appeared to have a series of positives associated with it, in contrast to the undoubted risks and harm arising from criminally driven use of mobile phones in prisons. Access to mobile phones appeared to go some way to defusing the frustrations and tensions that are associated with the inadequacy of the legitimate PIN phone system, and thus may also be mitigating the potential for violent confrontations and intimidation which centres on access to these phones.

Against the background of capacity and resource pressure, it could also be argued that access to mobile phones may have also been working to dilute the impact of prisoners being locked up for extended periods and thus mitigating prisoner resentment of increasingly lengthy lock-ins, which might otherwise present a powerful driver for confrontation with prison authorities.

For those with access to them, mobile phones were clearly underpinning prisoners’ ability to maintain meaningful ongoing relationships with family and loved ones and to participate more fully in family life and relationships, with apparent benefits for children and partners as well as prisoners themselves. It could also be argued therefore that mobile phones – and the quality communication with family and loved ones that they facilitated – were acting to support pro-social behaviour and moderate the culture of violence and the inward-looking prison culture.”

The post The Demand For and Use of Illicit Phones in Prison appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has recently received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent Application Number 14/945,145 entitled “System and method for controlling, monitoring and recording of wireless telecommunications services in penal institutions.” A notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and is pending issuance.

This patent further expands our Secure Prison Cell Phone Solutions™ intellectual property coverage and solidifies our position as the prime innovator in the prison mobile device space. The claims in this latest patent are directed toward remotely reassigning detainee call profiles to portable electronic devices in penal institutions.

As more correctional facilities deploy wireless communications devices including secure cell phones and tablets, these devices will inevitably be shared, rotated and re-purposed for economic, security and population management reasons. For instance, a prison may have a pool of tablets that are shared among inmates. As the tablet is reassigned from one inmate to another, a new profile, containing the second inmate’s unique account information, can be remotely applied to the device. A the same time, the first inmate’s profile is removed from the device to insure security and maintain privacy.

Brian Byrne, Managing Partner of meshIP, LLC commented, “With this third patent we now have intellectual property which covers the three key aspects of secure wireless inmate calling – system, application and device management. There have been many recent industry announcements regarding personal communications device deployments in prisons and jails, but we believe we are the only inmate communications services company with the intellectual property portfolio protecting these three core elements of the rapidly emerging inmate mobile device market.”

Update: The patent (US9,794,788) was issued on October 17, 2017 by the United States Patent Office. You can view the patent here: Third meshDETECT patent.

Update: meshDETECT was awarded its fourth patent on 4/30/19.

The post meshDETECT® Announces Notice Of Allowance From The USPTO For 3rd Patent Covering Mobile Inmate Calling appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

The FCC has frequently advocated for competition in the provision and availability of inmate communications services (ICS) in prisons and jails.

In its Second Report And Order And Third Further Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) adopted on 10/22/15, it wrote, “While we adopt regulations in this Order to correct failures in the ICS market, the Commission generally prefers to rely on competition over regulation. We seek additional comment on whether there are ways to promote competition within the ICS market to enable the Commission to sunset or eliminate our regulations adopted herein in the future. In the 2012 NPRM, the Commission noted that the First Wright Petition asked the Commission to “mandate the opening of the ICS market to competition.”

“In the First Wright Petition, the Petitioners further requested that the Commission address high ICS rates by prohibiting exclusive ICS contracts and collect-call-only restrictions at privately administered prisons, and requiring such facilities to permit multiple long-distance carriers to interconnect with prison telephone systems…The Commission sought comment on whether security issues were still a legitimate reason for limiting competition within correctional facilities, and whether any technological advances had changed the justification for such exclusive use.”

The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) commented, “The ICS commission issue also illustrates the fundamental problem with the existing status quo; specifically, the lack of competition in the ICS industry, in which, in exchange for commission payments, local jails and 42 state prison systems provide ICS providers with monopoly phone service contracts.”

The American Bar Association commented, “The ABA recommends that the FCC use its statutory authority under section 253(d) of the Act to preempt states from entering into exclusive provider agreements, and open up the ICS market to fair and widespread competition.”

And the Wright Petitioners wrote, “The FCC correctly notes that the Petitioners have been calling for the introduction of competition in the ICS market for more than 15 years, and in fact, this goal served as the basis for Martha Wright and the Petitioners to file the original lawsuit.”

Some of the solutions put forth to achieve this goal include an “equal access” approach similar to that which was put in place to open up local and long distance services to competition wherein consumers picked their local and long distance providers. Others have suggested a “wholesale/retail” bifurcation of the industry providers.

We believe, like the FCC, ABA, HRDC and the Wright Petitioners, that competition is an essential ingredient in breaking the ICS providers’ monopolies in prisons and jails in order to drive market-based pricing.

However, like the consumer market, unfettered and robust choice is what drives real competition. Completely bypassing the monopolists is the best way to ensure this choice. The consumer telecommunications market, while initially cracked open by regulatory schemes such as equal access, was fully emancipated by the introduction and widespread adoption of cellular phones.

An individual “wireless prison payphone” in the form of a secure cellular service offered to any detainee who wants it, without requiring interconnection to the monopolist’s infrastructure or the forced bifurcation of the industry into wholesale/retail providers, will offer true choice and therefore real competition in an industry that has for so long thrown up barriers to any meaningful competition.

By using commercial cellular networks to bypass the monopolists, no infrastructure, such as WiFi, is required in a facility and therefore there is no capital cost to the prison facility as well as no risk of interconnection hurdles and artificial costs imposed by the incumbent ICS provider.

The current prison payphones already installed will remain in place, thereby giving inmates and their families a choice.

If desired, the inmate can stand in line, waiting for his 15 minute call in a public area on the traditional payphone. Or he can make a wireless call of unlimited length in the relative privacy of his cell.

In this way, real market forces will be introduced into the ICS arena thereby fulfilling the stated goals of the FCC, the ABA, the HDRC and the Wright Petitioners as well as the families of prisoners throughout the United States.

The post Introducing Choice And Competition Into The Prison Payphone Industry appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has recently received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent Application Number 13/931,850, which is a continuation of our first patent entitled “System and method for controlling, monitoring and recording of wireless telecommunications services in penal institutions.” A notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and is pending issuance.

This patent will expand our Secure Prison Cell Phone Solutions™ intellectual property coverage and enhances our position as an innovator in the prison mobile device space. The claims in this patent are directed toward an application on a personal communications device, such as a tablet or cell phone, in the possession of an inmate that controls, monitors, and records voice phone calls. It also covers important security features to insure the device is authentic and is not tampered with or compromised.

Brian Byrne, Managing Partner of meshIP, LLC commented, “A strong intellectual property position has always been a fundamental objective of the company and we are pleased by the Notice of Allowance for this patent application, which will further enhance meshDETECT’s patent portfolio around prison mobile device solutions. Many of our competitors have announced similar solutions subsequent to the issuance of our first patent (US Patent Number 8,478,234), but we believe we are the only inmate communications services company with the specific intellectual property protecting our innovative prison mobile device solutions. We will continue to build on and leverage this strategic advantage.”

Update (2/23/16): The patent (US9,271,145) was issued today by the United States Patent Office. You can view the patent here: Second meshDETECT patent.

Update: meshDETECT was awarded its third patent on 10/17/17.

The post meshDETECT® Announces Notice Of Allowance From The USPTO For 2nd Patent Covering Mobile Inmate Calling appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

UPDATE (10/22/15): The order passed at the FCC by a vote of 3 to 2. Securus and Global Tel*Link immediately issued statements indicating they would seek a stay of the order and appeal to the United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, to get the entire decision overturned.

Original Post:

After a year of seeking comments on its Further Notice of Proposed Ruling Making focused on inmate phone call rates and fees, the FCC has released an Order stating it is proposing to cap rates for ALL ICS calls – local, long-distance, and international – while limiting or banning excessive fees on calls. The Order also continues the investigation into the prison inmate communications services industry by announcing a Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking focused on video visitation and other advanced inmate communications services.

The Commission will vote on the Order at the Commission’s October 22 Open Meeting.

Key Reforms:

Establishes caps on all inmate calling rates

• These new caps reduce the average rates for the vast majority of inmate calls substantially, from $2.96 to no more than $1.65 for a 15-minute intrastate call, and from $3.15 to no more than $1.65 for a 15-minute interstate call.

• Tiered rate structure accommodates the higher relative costs faced by jails (especially small jails) as opposed to state and federal prisons. The rate caps are as follows:

• 11 cents/minute for debit/prepaid calls, in state or federal prisons.
• 14 cents/minute for debit/prepaid calls in jails with 1,000 or more inmates.
• 16 cents /minute for debit/prepaid calls in jails with 350-999 inmates.
• 22 cents /minute for debit/prepaid calls in jails of up to 349 inmates.

• Rates for collect calls are slightly higher in the first year and will be phased down to these caps after a two-year transition period.

• Approximately 71% of inmates reside in state or federal prisons.

• Approximately 85% of inmates reside in institutions with populations exceeding 1,000.

• With the exception of the rate for small jails, these rates are substantially lower than the current 21 cents/minute interim cap on interstate rates.

• The rate caps permit recovery for robust security measures, as reflected in costs that ICS providers filed with the Commission.

Caps or bans burdensome and needless ancillary service charges, which can add nearly 40% to the cost of a single call

Limit and cap ancillary service charges to the following list of permitted charges:

• Automated payment by phone or website: $3.
• Payment through a live agent: $5.95.
• Paper bill fee: $2.
• Third-party financial transaction fees, such as fees charged by MoneyGram or Western  Union, may be passed through with no mark-up.
• All other ancillary service charges are prohibited.
• Mandatory taxes and regulatory fees may be passed through with no mark-up.

Discourages “site commission” payments by providers to institutions

• Defines the term “site commission” broadly as payments in money or services from inmate calling service providers to correctional institutions or government agencies.

• Excludes the cost of site commissions in establishing the rate caps and strongly discourages the use of site commissions.

• Continues to monitor the effect of site commissions on rates but does not restrict ICS providers’ sharing or profits if such payments fit within the rate caps.

Bans flat-rate calling

• Disallows providers from imposing so-called “flat-rate calling,” that is, a flat rate for a call up to 15 minutes regardless of actual call duration.

• Clarifies that this practice violates statutory mandates requiring that rates be just, reasonable, and fair, and penalizes callers who stay on the phone less than 15 minutes.

Ensures access for people with disabilities

• Requires providers to offer discounted rates for telephone relay service (TRS) calls for inmates with communications disabilities.

• Reminds correctional institutions of their obligation to make TRS available to people with communications disabilities.

• Encourages jails and prisons to allow commonly used forms of TRS and requires them to report service quality issues.

Transition Period

• Requires rate caps, site commission and ancillary service charge reforms to go into effect 90 days from the effective date of the Order.

Ongoing Review and Oversight

• Commits to reevaluate impact of reforms and rates in two years to determine if adjustments need to be made.

• Requires annual reporting and certification by ICS providers, to ensure compliance and enable monitoring of developments

Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

• Seeks further comment on promoting competition in inmate calling services without the need for additional regulation

• Video visitation and other advanced inmate communications services

• Recurring Mandatory Data Collection

The post FCC Proposing Capped Rates On All Prisoner Calls appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

Here is the latest summary of recent news articles regarding contraband cell phones in prisons around the world. I call these periodic round up of news items, “Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs” because this is essentially what smuggled mobile phones in jails have become – a substitute for the current wall mounted prison payphones.

In this edition, we explore some of the recent news regarding prison tablet devices and how they highlight what we have been promoting for some time now – prison payphones will be replaced by a secure prison device with cell phone capabilities that will reduce the demand for contraband cell phones. Regardless of whether the device takes the form factor of a tablet or a cell phone, wireless voice capabilities will be the key service offering in reducing contraband and recidivism.

• A spokesperson for the correctional technology company GTL, says some jails and prisons are even replacing wall phones with secure tablets that inmates can use not only to make calls, but also for education, entertainment and scheduling. “This is a trend that has only just begun to take shape,” he says. (Source)

• “This is what’s going to replace phones eventually,” the JPay founder told Yahoo Tech. “There are going to be major changes within the prison system environment because of this technology.” (Source)

• Securus Technologies announced today that distribution of its SecureView inmate tablet will top 2,000 units. “Through our initial tablet program, inmates overwhelmingly enjoy the privacy the tablet gives them for phone calls along with the games, music, and access to information such as Law Library and JobView,” (Source)

• “We believe that the Inspire devices are the future of inmate communications, education and entertainment,” said GTL’s chief marketing officer. “They improve a facility’s operational efficiencies by reducing costs and conflicts over access to phones, and have nearly limitless educational possibilities.” The company has already launched its wireless tablet technology in correctional facilities. Alameda County, Calif. currently operates one of the largest deployments of correctional wireless tablet technology in the country, according to GTL, and allows inmates to place calls of up to four hours in length directly from their jail cell. This ability to maintain communication and connection with friends and family has been linked to a reduction in recidivism. (Source)

• Companies with their exclusive focus on education and rehabilitation, are relying on economies of scale and the power of disruption to make a profit while bringing down the cost of technology and communication services. At scale, tablets can be provided at very low cost to facilities. Inmates pay no fees for the content. And there’s no technical barrier to someday replacing expensive telephone calls with much cheaper tablet-based broadband phone service. (Source)

• “At this juncture, we are not persuaded that Wi-Fi is an acceptably secure solution,” said the CEO of America Prison Data Systems in New York City, which helped San Francisco roll out 200 tablet computers at its jail last October. “That time may come down the road, but for now we know Wi-Fi is less secure.” (Source)

The post Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs – Prison Tablet Edition appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

The first round of comments on the FCC’s Second Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding the reduction of the cost of all inmate calls are in. Here is one of the more interesting insights we have gleaned from those submissions:

The Prison Policy Initiative’s submission on advanced inmate communications services in prison discusses the very real need that these new services (such as the meshDETECT Secure Prison Cell Phone Solution) address:

These Services Address a Real Need

“These services are typically bundled with other communications services, and we rarely see them given much attention in industry bids for contracts. Surprisingly, we didn’t find many examples of the industry even bothering to explain the value that these services provide, so we will do so here:

Traditionally, there are only a few ways that incarcerated people and loved ones on the outside can communicate:

• By letter, sent by either party through the U.S. mail, with all of the delays that that entails.

• By visit in person, sometimes at great distance and sometimes arranged in advance, and always initiated by the non-incarcerated person.

• By telephone, always initiated by the incarcerated person.

These three avenues leave some serious gaps, namely that there is no way to send a timely message to an incarcerated person, such as:

• Your father just passed away.

• I was at home for your regular weekly call, but the doorbell rang right before you called and I missed your phone call. Can you call again tonight or tomorrow morning?

• I found a buyer for the car. Do you know where the deed is?

• I fell and broke my leg. I’m going to be ok, but I can’t make it to our regular visit tomorrow.

In these circumstances, there is no good way for family members to proceed. They can send a letter or wait for a phone call but all of these delays create unnecessary stress for everyone involved. In practice, there is one other possibility that often creates its own problems: the person on the outside calls the correctional facility, speaks to a counselor or the warden, and asks that a message be relayed for the incarcerated person to call. (And then, the person has to sit by the phone and hope that the message was relayed.)

Many of these services simply give both incarcerated and non-incarcerated people more methods of timely communication which can be initiated by either party. In fact, as we explain in our video visitation report, these services tend to be most popular where they give people not just a new technology with which to communicate, but also a more flexible approach to communication.”

With meshDETECT, families and loved ones can call into the detainee’s secure prison cell phone, if allowed by the facility. We agree that this is an important feature that will significantly improve the timeliness and quality of detainee/family communications.

The post FCC Filing Highlights The Value Of Inbound Calls To Prisoners appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in a new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.

Characteristics of a Disruptive Innovation:

• Its performance attributes meet the unfulfilled needs of an emerging market’s customers. These same attributes are not initially valued by the mainstream market, which instead value different performance attributes and initially see the innovation as substandard.
• Emerging market adoption enables the innovation to increase its performance and to begin overlapping with the performance expectations of the mainstream market.
• Awareness of the innovation increases as the innovation develops, influencing change in the mainstream market’s perception of what it values.
• The change in the mainstream market’s perception of what it values enables the innovation to disrupt and replace the existing offerings in the mainstream market.

In the prison payphone industry, it is clear that the high call prices and low availability of the traditional wall phones in prisons and jails are not meeting the communication desires of detainees and their families. As a result, the demand for contraband cell phones has soared. Prison administrators, and the prison payphone companies themselves, have focused on strategies to reduce the supply of smuggled mobile phones through the deployment of expensive managed access systems, cell phone detection technologies and specially trained K9s.

However, none of these strategies address the fundamental demand (and associated corruption of guards and staff supplying the phones) of detainees seeking lower cost and more frequent access to telephone services.

In mature industries, such as the prison payphone industry, the risk for incumbents is the danger of dematuring. Dematuring happens when a stable industry with known competitors begins to be dynamic and new again.  If an industry is dematuring, the chances of getting hit with a disruptive innovation are much greater and  established players lose their hegemony while value in the industry can move to entirely new players or parts of the value chain.

An industry is in danger of dematuring if two or more of the following four things happen simultaneously:

1. customer’s core requirements change;
2. the core technologies used to produce the product or service change;
3. the number of large competitors interested in the same market is on the rise;
4. significant regulation, deregulation, or re-regulation is coming down the pike.

In the prison payphone industry we see commissary companies such as Keefe entering the market as well as new initiatives by the FCC and state regulatory commissions to lower the high cost of prison phone calls.

We are also seeing the adoption of mobility technologies such as RFID, GPS and handheld devices. The very first payphone was installed in a bank in 1889 (and probably in a jail not too long after). Yet the inmate communications service providers such as Global Tel*Link and Securus Technologies are still using this basic device (admittedly with very sophisticated back-end controls) over 120 years later!

There is no denying the pervasive and rapid adoption of wireless technologies in the the consumer market has begun to seep into prisons and jails. Add to this the desire of prison administrators to deploy on-line forms, books, MP3 players and commissary access and one quickly comes to the realization that voice communications can be an important component of this move to individualized, utilitarian and portable access devices to educate, rehabilitate and manage detainees.

With meshDETECT, we are leading the charge to disrupt the prison payphone industry by providing a secure prison cell phone solution that provides the controls and security required by prison administrators while offering enhanced communications opportunities to detainees and their families thereby reducing recidivism and the demand for contraband cell phones.

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