Commissioners approve RFID jail technology

While the movie “Cool Hand Luke” may be a viewing favorite for many, the 1967 prison chain-gang drama is a far cry from today’s technology-based correctional system.

Which is why Sequoyah County Commissioners last Monday approved a contract between Codex Corporation dba Guardian RFID and the sheriff ’s office.

RFID is the acronym for radio frequency identification, technology that uses radio waves to identify people or objects. A device is used that reads information contained in a wireless device from a distance without making any physical contact or requiring a line of sight. The system is currently being used by about 17 counties in Oklahoma.

“We actually got visited by the jail inspector last Thursday, and he talked highly of it,” Sequoyah County Jail Administrator Jeremy Day told the commissioners. “It’s real-time tracking of all inmates, and our hourly site checks. And it’s time stamped.

“Inmates wear an RFID-tracking bracelet. We can scan it when we issue them supplies, toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, toothbrush, new jumpsuit, whatever. If somebody has a razor issued to him, it’s gonna show red until we scan to get that razor back,” Day explained.

“And inmates’ suicide watch, there’s no more paper logs. With this system, it’s all done electronically. Because it’s time stamped, there’s no refuting the fact that we did check on them or we didn’t check on them.”

The RFID system eliminates human error or claims of falsifying records, Day said.

“Now we use a paper log and then back it up with our cameras. With this system, there’s no disputing anything. There’ll be RFID tokens in the pods. Like north pod top of the stairs, there’ll be two up there and one on each end of the stairs, so we have to walk the entire length in order to scan it. We know the time it should take for us to do our check,” Day explained. “And then our hourly site checks, it’ll give us a five-minute notification: ‘Hey, it’s time to go do this check.’

“Let’s say that somebody busts a sprinkler head and we’re busy with it. We have to do a documentation on why we did not get this site check done when the timer went off. So I think for liability reasons, it’s well worth the investment.”

Day said the first-year cost of the system is “a little over $26,000” due to start-up costs. Subsequent years would be less expensive.

But the cost is outweighed by the benefit RFID provides.

“The help in risk mitigation is phenomenal,” Day pointed out.

And Undersheriff Charles House agreed.

Invaluable for suicide watch

“It’s just a way to continue to try to alleviate liability. The main thing we like about it is the suicide documentation. Right now, we’ve got five or six to one cell, we’ve got five or six mental health issues that’s tying up a whole cell. Right now, we’ve got five individuals in our custody that are mental health issues that they occupy a cell by themselves. Normally four people would be in [a cell], we can only put one in,” House told the commissioners.

“They might not necessarily be on suicide watch, but they can hurt somebody,” Day added. “They have to have special observation, and [with] this system, we can do special observations and it’s documented. There’s no denying. I could always say I did this site check. It’s documented I did the site check. But when it comes down to it, we’re not going to know until there’s an issue and we have to pull camera footage, because nobody has the time to sit and watch cameras 24/7.

“They can scan the inmate. Right now, our paper log is numbered, showing their actions. What are they doing? This will be the same setup, except we just click what they’re doing. And then if we need to put a video note in, we can actually take a video of how they’re acting and save it to the cloud,” Day said. “We’ll put another monitor up in there, we can utilize one of the computers that we have now where we just tie it up to another monitor and it’ll show a real-life dashboard of what’s going on in the facility.”

But what if an inmate tries to destroy the wristband?

“The wristbands are our only drawback,” Day admitted. “It was that or a pocket card the size of a credit card. I figured they’d lose them a lot easier or try to sharpen them.

“So with the wristband, I spoke to some other counties [about] what they do if an inmate destroys the wristband,” the jail administrator said. “They charge them for the wristband, because that’s county property. Same thing if they destroy our blanket, we can charge them for the blanket, charge them for the towel, whatever.

“We’ll provide the one wristband at no cost. If they destroy it, then it gets taken out of their commissary account to replace it. I’m sure we’ll have some destroy them just right off the bat. Then they’ll get put in sanctions and we’ll go utilize the commissary, different things while they’re off sanctions.

“The RFID tokens on the walls, they’re pretty much indestructible. There’s no destructing them,” Day said.

The commissioners were quick to buy in to the RFID benefit.

Aiding with accountability

“It’d be nice if all 77 counties had one. We see all these lawsuits coming out of the jail, and that would just be ideal,” observed District 3 Commissioner Jim Rogers, who also serves as president of the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma (ACCO).

“We know the liability. Everybody we talk to, our county and different counties are fighting this same problem. There are still county jails that are basically saying, ‘We don’t care what you tell us, we’re gonna do it this way’,” House told the commissioners.

“You’re right. And they’re gonna end up losing their insurance,” District 1 Commissioner Ray Watts responded.

House said Ottawa County was one of the counties resistant to change.

In 2023, a federal jury awarded a payment of $33 million to the family of an inmate who died in Ottawa County Jail.

“Now the taxpayers are paying for what they didn’t do. In a big way,” Watts pointed out. For each of Oklahoma’s 77 counties, attorney fees and lawsuit expenses are paid from each county’s $2 million insurance policy through ACCO. Anything left on the policy goes toward the judgment, while the county is responsible for payment beyond the $2 million cap.

“As criminals get smarter, as liability continues to increase and go up … the jails here, we better do what we can do,” House added.

“I think every sheriff and every jail administrator that has lost [their insurance coverage] because of negligence should have to sit in on our state board meetings,” Rogers suggested. “They should have to sit in and listen to all the lawsuits that we face right now. Like Ray said, we’re at a point now that what we call the top 25, we don’t know if we’re gonna be able to insure them next year. If we can’t insure them, they’re not gonna be able to get insurance. They need to take it seriously.”

Then District 2 Commissioner Beau Burlison cut to the heart of whether to approve purchasing the RFID system.

“Does it help your deputies? Is it a little bit more accountability for them?” he asked Day.

“You can run the dashboard report. You can see who’s your productive employees, who’s your least productive employees,” Day explained. “It even goes down to mail pass. If they get legal mail, you can make them take a picture holding the legal mail — like the envelope — to show that they did receive it. Because we get complaints, ‘I didn’t get this, I didn’t …’ No, here’s documented. It’s based in the cloud, time stamped. There’s no cheating the system, because we don’t operate the system.”

To be sure, with RFID — unlike with the cinematic warden and Luke Jackson — there’s no failure to communicate.