Various tech companies are trying to change the prison environment in favor of the administration, eroding constitutional rights, and weakening the importance of real contact with the outside world. It’s not just the lousy mail service and the absence of kids’ colorful drawings from personal correspondence, this new censorship denies prisoners’ photos, handwritten correspondence, art, and holiday cards. Prisoners’ contacts with the outside world have diminished since telecom megastar. Securus, and their new correspondence program began – which may be the real purpose. To terminate all connections between a prisoner and her outside world is to crush her spirit, hope, and emotional stability, yet authorities do it. Could these issues be some of the reasons prisoners are killing themselves at higher rates than the general U.S. population? Will we need to rely on Securus to provide us with the statistics of the dying and dead in U.S. prisons?
Another enterprising group of prison visionaries in the telecom business is Global Tel Link (GTL); they’ve dreamed up a virtual reality service to allow prisoners to “escape from their controlled environment into the real world for a limited time”! Fake visits. Their mission statement is to eventually replace in person visits so that prisoners can interact and visit friends and family in a controlled and monitored virtual environment. For the “Watchers” who watch you on your Securus mood-monitoring tablet, these wise guys at heavy-weight GTL are developing augmented reality spy glasses. (GTL has been absorbed by another high-tech company). The A.R., (augmented reality) device, worn by correctional officers will be used to identify prisoners (Remember facial recognition systems?) with visual displays on each prisoner’s biometrics, offender history, case summary, threat level classification, well, you get the idea where this is headed. With an array of special (and possibly futuristic) abilities, A.R. could rival the special effects in the “Demolition Man” (a solution to the dilemma of prison management), the “Terminator” trilogy (another solution for unruly inmates), and a slew of other science fiction movies. Prison advocates, having monitored prison technology for years, believe the tech conglomerates and robotics’ companies will replace the human correctional officers in the not-so-distant future. The guards are overworked, underpaid, under-educated, and need rest after 16-hour days. They also require state-mandated breaks, sick days, retirement funds, and worst of all, correctional officers expect to be paid. These officers create multi-million-dollar lawsuits for taxpayers by harassing and abusing offenders, or by the use of excessive force on prisoners. Correctional officers provoke and escalate situations creating unnecessary lawsuits. Prisons cannot keep staff. Nobody really wants to work at a prison at a lowly security officer level, where the pay is around the same amount Wal-Mart greeters would receive. When the average frontline security officer acts like a twelve-year old, it puts everyone at risk. It costs taxpayers millions…millions…and more millions that could be used in the public schools or for prison education.
Unfortunately, with that in mind, it makes sense for high tech companies and the robotics’ industries to develop the “Robo-cop” with all the AR capabilities. GTL has a well-described and detailed patent for mobile correctional facility robots. GTL hopes someday to create robots that take orders without complaining to their captains and wardens. Robots will work tirelessly around the clock with no pay, no food, and no bathroom breaks-outfitted with biometric sensors. These scanning abilities will include fingerprint and iris (eye) pattern detection. Facial recognition systems will be better developed and able to discretely tell the difference between racial characteristics (for white privilege?). Naturally, there will be defensive weapons promoted as non-lethal to subdue disruptive crowds of inmates. Perhaps the robots will be geared up to toss bean bags at complaining inmates whining about their cold oatmeal. Can you imagine a conversation between a robotic officer and an inmate wanting to turn in a simple complaint form—it might sound something like this:
Inmate: “Excuse me, c/o Cy Borg, I’d like to turn in a complaint about the cable being scrambled and the heat not working,” Inmate extends his hand with the complaint form, hoping Clo Cy Borg will take it.
c/o Cy Borg: “Identify yourself, offender. My vision is obscured by hair covering most of your face.”
Inmate: “It’s Shanks, sir… or ma’am.”
c/o Cy Borg: ” This does not compute. I have no ‘Shanks’ in my data base. Identify yourself.” Inmate Shanks is puzzled and just stares. C/o Cy Borg grabs the complaint form with his metallic grip claws, along with two soups from the inmate’s other hand. c/o Cy Borg crushes the soups and complaint in his grip claws. The mono-vision red light grows brighter. “Contraband!”
Inmate Shanks: “But, c/o C y Borg, you’re destroying my complaint form and my ramen noodles.”.
c/o Cy Borg: “Air analysis indicates C-4 explosives, must destroy…must destroy…” (Chili packets in ramen noodle soups do smell like (-4 plastic explosives).
Inmate Shanks: Moving his hair away from his face with raised hands. ” See me now. TIN-CAN?” Shanks roars.
c/o Cy Borg: “Aggressive action… aggressive action… Please stand away from the chair, offender. Put your hands behind your back.” C/o Cy Borg encircles inmate Shanks clicking the silver bracelets over his wrists.
Inmate Shanks: “But I only want the cable fixed and some heat!”
c/o Cy Borg: “Call for back-up, Siri… Call the SORT team, DANGER! DANGER!”
You can imagine all the misinterpretations and accidents that are liable to happen in the prison setting because things are so unpredictable between humans and machines. I mean, does your smart toaster, smart toilet or smart phone always work to your expectations? Does the silky-voiced smart car or that snippy “Siri” talk back to you? Well… now you see how problems will develop with correctional officer Cy Borg. What about the interactions between humans and a mobile patrol officer? Even Knightscope, the robotic-patrol unit, deployed not in far-flung third-world proxy wars, but in your neighborhood mall. These mobile-talking trashcans still have a slew of problems to be worked out, but thankfully, the surveillance and “mood-monitoring” tablets, now in 500,000 prisoners’ hands, made by Securus’ parent company, Aventiv Technologies, however, do not talk back nor crush ramen soups. (As of this writing, Securus is now in bankruptcy court in 2025).
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