The circumstances inside the Fulton County Jail system are dire. Inmates at one of many jails in Atlanta, Georgia, are sleeping on the ground in plastic trays. Cell doorways grasp off hinges, footage from one local news report shows, and leaked water swimming pools on the ground in some areas. Last September, one particular person was discovered dead and covered in bed bugs.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, which runs multiple jails round Atlanta and has been granted more funding to fix the problems, can also be within the strategy of rolling out a brand new surveillance system that may observe inmates to specific ranges. Across the area’s jails, a whole bunch of sensors are being embedded into the partitions. Using radio frequencies, these talk with wristbands issued to inmates.

The system, which was created by Georgia-based agency Talitrix, can observe an inmate’s heartbeat, decide their location each 30 seconds, and create 3D pictures exhibiting who comes into contact with whom. Documents WIRED obtained via a public file request, together with a authorized settlement, statements of labor, and inner PowerPoint shows, describe how the monitoring system operates and supply a glimpse into its inside workings.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office and Talitrix declare the system will help make understaffed jails extra environment friendly and improve general security, whereas monitoring coronary heart charges can alert employees to an inmate’s potential well being issues or suicide makes an attempt. Critics, in the meantime, say monitoring applied sciences topic inmates to extra surveillance and fail to deal with deeper points with the felony justice system.

The Talitrix system is considered one of quite a few digital monitoring units being deployed within the sprawling internet of native jails within the United States—and it might be one of the crucial refined. Some seem to focus on suicide risk, whereas others have used RFID chips that are manually scanned. As jails and prisons face staffing shortages, they’ve more and more turned to automation to observe and management folks caught up within the system. At the identical time, academic researchers have said inmates are “one of the best surveilled, data-fied and documented populations,” with out a option to decide out.

“Inside the Walls”

Talitrix’s monitoring system is made up of two components: the bodily infrastructure—sensors embedded within the jail and Fitbit-like wearables—and its software program that permits corrections officers to observe knowledge being collected and obtain alerts.

Talitrix first began working with Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in September 2021, firm paperwork present. The agency initially ran a trial of its system inside one of many area’s jails whereas it was creating the know-how, and it has been increasing its use since February of this year. In whole, the paperwork present, 750 sensors (costing $350 every) are to be put in and 1,000 wristbands (at $130 every) offered. The sensors are being positioned across the jail however not inside cells, these concerned say. Use of the software program prices a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} per yr.

The plan is for round 450 inmates to put on the wristbands as a part of a deal on the area’s major Rice Street jail, says Justin Hawkins, CEO of Talitrix. This consists of the psychiatric and acute medical wards. (Lt Col Jarrett Gorlin, from the Sheriff’s Office, confirms that the division has been trialing the wristbands and is planning to additional roll out the know-how, though a “timeline for the full deployment is yet to be determined.”)