Communication Concepts
A communication system can be designed to increase security, improve relations between prisoners and prison management, reduce prevalence of rumours and make it easier to expose corruption and easier for prisoners to keep in touch with family and friends.
Communication between prisoners and the outside world for obvious reasons needs to be monitored for prisoners trying to further criminal activity. There should be communication channels where easy communication with prison authorities can be achieved without the risk of prison officer interference.
Currently prisoners are allowed access to designated telephones, access must be provided to new prisoners and any prisoner who needs to make an urgent domestic call17. Prisoners must be provided free private telephone access to the Samaritans and ‘Listener’ services provided by all prisoner designated telephones.27
Letter pack concept
Written correspondence could be managed through a ‘letter pack’ system. Prisoners are able to collect a letter pack, which enables them to send two letters. Letter packs are collected one at a time by the prisoner by swiping a Personal Access Tag on a dispensing machine. This will print a bar code to the envelope encoding the prisoner’s identity number; a control aimed to reduce potential trade of envelopes.
Returning the pack for postage could be a similar process, swiping the machine with their Personal Access Tag and feeding the envelope in to the machine.
The large envelopes are then opened by administration staff, those marked accordingly will be directed to the prison warden. Letters to be sent to personal addresses may be checked, or otherwise are sealed and posted. All personal envelopes are to be deposited unsealed.
Ball point pens with flexible shafts would be provided for writing.
Digital communications
Prisoners should be allowed access to computers use to enable them to write emails from a prison based email account and the system would be integrated with education systems. Various restrictions to addresses or number of emails they can send or receive/open can be put in place.
Similarly these emails can be monitored automatically for specific words or phrases or monitored by off-shore staff. The access to such computers, which would resemble computer portals for public use, would be accessible on timed tag based system.
Heavily restricted general internet access should also be made available for prisoners. This may include access to BBC news, Wikipedia and unlimited access to prison rules and regulations. Screen reader software can be available for visually impaired or illiterate prisoners.
The display and easy access of prison rules and procedures may help prisoners to regulate staff poor practice through an increased understanding of rules and procedure.
There may be ways to enable positive relationships with a prisoners family to be fostered through the use of existing social networking services in a carefully restricted manner.
Questions and answers
Prisoner question and answer procedure via network protocol, enabling prisoners to ask specific questions about their rights, records or things that are going on. These can be answered depending on where they are directed. Abuse of these procedures can be restricted by limiting the prisoners to the number of questions they can ask, and by restricting those who do.
The questions and answers can be projected on a wall or presented on a screen in the canteen or somewhere with good prisoner exposure.
This simple Q&A system can be a valuable tool to quell and reduce rumours that are known to be a threat to security.
Management of information should include establishing channels of communication to both staff and prisoners to eliminate misinformation and quell destructive rumours. 7
Dante Alighieri, ‘Institutional Correction‘
[For the prevention of riots] Simple, clear, and easy-to-understand disciplinary, grievance, and classification appeal processes go a long way to allowing prisoners to “vent” their frustrations. There should always be at least the perception of fairness no matter how arbitrary and bureaucratic the grievance/appeal process actually is. Data collected from the prisoner grievance process is also more valuable information than that collected from a snitch system. 7
Dante Alighieri, ‘Institutional Correction’
