By G.F. Guercio, Contributing Editor


The U.S. makes up five percent of the world’s population yet this country houses 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, according to Jeff Milner, vice president of Sales and Marketing for Corrisoft.  More troubling—over 60 percent of those released from incarceration will end up back in prison within the first three years of their release due to re-offense.  He notes that the war on drugs during the 1980s and ’90s led to significant prison overcrowding, and a vast majority of states have either begun or are seriously considering steps to address the problem. 
 

“In an effort to reduce prison overcrowding and improve recidivism rates, states across the nation have either enacted prison reform measures or are well down the path to making significant policy changes,” says Milner. States like Indiana, Georgia, Utah, Alabama, Nevada, New York, Ohio, California, and Texas have or are in the process of enacting prison reform measures. 
 

Specifically, the states are targeting two main approaches to help alleviate prison overcrowding and reduce recidivism—sentencing reform and improved offender rehabilitation and reintegration programs.  He says states are looking at revising mandatory sentencing as well as removing jail time as a sentence for many low-level crimes: primarily drug-related offenses.  Simply put, jail time won’t help reform these individuals, he notes.  The new approach is to keep low-level offenders at the community level and provide them with the resources proven to truly affect change and reform: addiction services, mental health services, job placement assistance, housing assistance, food and clothing assistance, etc., while equally emphasizing accountability. 
 

“The approach of using a single device to keep offenders accountable and act as a means to facilitate critical support services is a concept unique to Corrisoft,” says Milner.  “Gone are the days of offenders simply being a dot on a map.  Holding offenders accountable is more than just tracking their activity. It’s about providing the resources, tools and support necessary to remove the barriers and empower offenders to take direct control of getting their life back on track.”  
 

He espouses the change in responsibility as beneficial to offenders’ success.  “That’s the beauty of it—the shift—moving from the idea of monitoring someone as a means of enforcing the rules to the concept of using compliance administration as a way to help offenders become accountable for their own improvement, achieve true reform, and break the cycle of recidivism.”
 

The AIR Mobile Connect system couples a specifically-configured and controlled smart phone with a small, lightweight, tamper-reporting tether worn by the offender.  The tether acts as an identifier between the smart phone and offender, and it is paired with the phone to ensure it is with them at all times.  

Air Mobile Connect affords community-based supervision officers the ability to engage in real-time, two-way communications with offenders, while maintaining GPS tracking data, according to Milner. This means agencies can take a proactive approach to interacting with offenders to better ensure they stay compliant with the terms of their release, he says.  
 

“Having the ability to electronically manage offender scheduling, use technology to automate a whole host of tasks, and proactively engage with the offenders vastly improves an agency’s efficiency and enables officers to spend more time in the field where they can truly help offenders,” says Milner.

The smart phone comes loaded with Corrisoft’s proprietary mobile application and control features and provides 24/7 access to AIR Support Agents and/or AIR Integration Specialists who are equipped to facilitate a wide range of offender support services, Milner relates. The AIR Mobile user-friendly home screen acts as the AIR Mobile Connect main interface and includes e-mail, text, scheduling, camera and resource functions in addition to the real-time communication capabilities.  With one touch of a button an offender can be in direct contact with the supervision officer, an AIR Support agent who is available 24/7, or other designated resources.  
 

To enhance efficiencies for the supervising officer, the AIR Mobile Connect system also avails its data to a separate supervisor phone mobile application, which features tools that organize offender compliance history, displays real-time offender mapping location, provides access to offender profiles, and provides one-touch direct access to offenders to facilitate proactive protocol management.  In addition, agencies manage the AIR Mobile Connect system through the AIR Dashboard, a web-based user interface that displays the offender’s profile, terms, and activity data alongside the real-time GPS tracking statistics.   
 

To supplement contact, or in lieu of making home visits, public safety officers can conduct virtual searches through the smart phone’s camera, he says. The smart phone feeds real-time GPS data into the AIR Dashboard, which uses an exception-based approach to display tracking information and alerts.  This means the dashboard only shows critical notifications rather than listing all activity data points which would force the safety officer to comb through large amounts of data to identify any alerts that need additional attention.  
 

In most agencies offenders come into the office once a week to meet with their supervision officer or case manager to review their schedule, he notes. The meeting can often last between 10 minutes to half an hour, and most officers oversee 100 to 200 offenders.  This practice forces officers to spend too much time in the office as opposed to out in the field where they can make the most impact, Milner asserts.  With the AIR Mobile Connect system, the entire scheduling process can be done using the platform’s calendar application.  The offenders submit their calendar requests at a designated time each week for the officer to review and approve.  Throughout the week the supervising officer can monitor activity against the offender’s schedule in real time—proactively communicating with the offender to ensure compliance instead of retroactively reviewing whether or not an offender was compliant with their previous week’s schedule, he says.  
 

Additionally, Corrisoft has recently developed a mobile application, currently in beta testing, which facilitates portable, remote drug and alcohol testing capabilities, Milner says. While currently a stand-alone device/software platform, the goal is to integrate this much-needed new substance abuse technology into the AIR Mobile Connect system.     

 

 

For more information:  Corrisoft/AIR program, 859.685.1492, www.corrisoft.com