Inner condition The Fulton County Jail system is terrible. Inmates at one of the prisons in Atlanta, Georgia, are sleeping on the floor in plastic trays. Cell door hanging off its hinges, footage from a local news report shows, and puddles of water leaked on the floor in some areas. Last September, a person was found dead and full of bed bugs.
Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, which operates many prisons around Atlanta and was get extra funding to fix the problem, is also in the process of rolling out a new surveillance system that can track prisoners to a degree of accuracy. Across prisons in the area, hundreds of sensors are attached to the walls. Using radio frequencies, they communicate with wristbands issued to prisoners.
The system, created by Georgia-based company Talitrix, can monitor an inmate’s heart rate, determine their location every 30 seconds, and generate 3D images that show who’s in contact with whom. WIRED documents obtained through a request for public records, including legal agreements, work reports, and internal PowerPoint presentations, describe how the monitoring system works and provide a brief overview of how the monitoring system works. inner workings of the system.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office and Talitrix claim the system can help make understaffed prisons more efficient and enhance overall safety, while heart rate monitoring can alert staff about the prisoner’s potential health problems or suicidal thoughts. Meanwhile, critics say surveillance technologies expose prisoners to more surveillance and fail to address deeper problems with the criminal justice system.
The Talitrix system is one of a number of electronic surveillance devices being deployed in the vast network of local prisons in the United States—and it is possibly one of the most complex. Some seem focus on suicide riskwhile others used The RFID chip is manually scanned. Like prison and prison Faced with a shortage of staff, they increasingly turn to automation to track and control those caught up in the system. Simultaneously, academic researchers said inmates are “one of the best surveyed, data-collected and documented populations,” with no option to opt out.
“Inside the Walls”
Talitrix’s tracking system is made up of two parts: its physical infrastructure—sensors embedded in prisons and Fitbit-like wearables—and its software that allows officers to adjust to Monitor collected data and receive alerts.
Company documents show that Talitrix first began working with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in September 2021. Initially, the company ran a test of its system in one of the district’s prisons. area when the technology is developing and it has been widely used. since February this year. In total, the documents show, 750 sensors ($350 each) will be installed and 1,000 wristbands ($130 each) provided. The sensors are being placed around the prison, not in the cells, the people involved said. Using the software costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Justin Hawkins, CEO of Talitrix, said the plan is for about 450 inmates to wear wristbands as part of the deal at the area’s main Rice Street prison. This includes acute and mental health wards. (Lt Col Jarrett Gorlin, from the Sheriff’s Office, confirmed that the department has been testing the wristbands and is planning to continue deploying the technology, though “the full rollout period is yet to be determined.” .”)
