The Buzz: Install of the Month

Video visitation reduces the time spent on security searches of visitors.

At the Pinellas County Jail in Largo, Florida, gone is the familiar movie scene of a visitor putting her hand up to Plexiglas and “touching” the hand of a prisoner on the other side. During the building of a new Central Division building in 1997, the jail switched from face-to-face visitation to video visitation because the existing entrance to the visitation center was inaccessible during construction. A triple-wide trailer across the street from the jail's entrance became the temporary remote visitation center.

Fiber had been installed in 1994 to distribute television signals to prisoners and, for some, computer networking. In 1997 the jail laid more fiber to support the temporary visitation facility, which initially had about 100 visitation booths — 50 on each end.

That triple-wide trailer has become a permanent part of the jail facility. Outside of the “security envelope,” it lets visitors videoconference with their loved ones without entering the jail facility and having to endure invasive security measures. (The $1.5 million trailer was dismantled during Hurricane Ivan, but the storm fortunately bypassed the jail.)

“When we moved it out of the security envelope, we opened it up for the family,” says Eliseo Santana, the communications maintenance supervisor at the jail. He says that the jail expected to hear complaints about the cancellation of face-to-face visits through glass. Santana says that not only has he yet to receive one complaint but the visitors are happy about video visitation because it has largely eliminated the chaos engendered by through-glass visitation. Visitors often ride three buses each way on their way to the jail, essentially making it an all-day trip. Often prisoners could not be located within the jail for whatever reason, and waiting two to three hours for an inmate to be brought out for a visit was not uncommon. Clearing security also added to the wait time for visitors.

The Pinellas County Jail installed 17 Communications Specialties Pure Digital Fiberlink 7140 Series multiplexers in its video visitation center.

In addition, the video quality is better than what would be possible over IP. The analog technology means no compression and no latency between the inmate and visitor. “It's not state of the art, but it's primo,” says Santana.

In the past year, Pinellas County Jail has added 17 units of Communication Specialties' Pure Digital Fiberlink 7140 Series multiplexers, each of which transmits four channels of video and eight channels of audio. These are replacing the existing transmission solution, point-to-point fiber-optic transmitters installed originally by Datapoint of San Antonio, which are now retired as soon as they require maintenance. Patrick Sellati of Strike Industries in Clearwater, Florida, was involved in the design and installation of the original video visitation project, and he recommended the 7140 Series as a way to expand the system. Santana says that the Communications Specialties gear costs the same on a per-channel basis as the previous solution, but the new multiplexers require no new fiber infrastructure, so the jail can expand its capabilities without incurring increased costs.

The overcrowded facility houses 3,350 men and women. During the average day, the jail hosts about 400 visitations, all of them over fiber lines of a CCTV network. The system can handle more than 54 simultaneous video streams, says Santana, with 54 visitor stations and about 160 inmate stations spread within the complex's seven buildings. Some inmates have even been married over video visitation.

Lawyers still can conduct face-to-face meetings within the jail in a private room in a controlled environment. But Santana says that the video infrastructure has increased productivity for the county's legal system. The public defender can videoconference from the court with those awaiting trial. The buildings are close enough together to allow fiber runs between them.

The video is sent over fiber and routed through a control hub, a VuGate Video Switch Array PCA, and VuGate software lets the controller connect individual prisoner booths to the appropriate guest booth. Audio is much like a telephone call and is routed by a VuGate Audio Switch Array PCA.

A variety of TV monitors display the images of inmates and their visitors: 13-inch Panasonic CT-13R16Vs, 20-inch JVC AV-20230s, and 27-inch Sharp 27U-S610s. The 27-inch monitors will soon have picture-in-picture (PiP) capabilities, so the visitors can see themselves. This, says Santana, is an advantage for the hearing impaired; PiP lets users ensure that their signs are visible within the video frame. The color cameras are Howard NCK-9127CMFs.

The jail will soon break ground on a new 440-bed medical facility that is planned to be completed within 18 months. The new building has been architecturally designed for video visitation, which has saved construction money because the design allows for a smaller structure, because there is no space set aside for physical visitation areas.

Within the next year, the jail also plans to introduce high-speed lines or broadband Internet access from the outside so that an inmate's loved ones could “visit” from out of town, for example, at a Kinko's that offers videoconferencing service.

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