It's hard to believe that in today's high- tech age prisoners' personal cash is held in cigar boxes and plastic bags — reminiscent of the old days when people hid their savings under their beds. Many of today's prisons, however, still use this rudimentary method for managing cash. Visitors bring cash in to replenish inmates' accounts — and it is manually counted then stored in their individual boxes or baggies.
TW Vending (www.twvending.com), a full-service vending company specializing in jail systems, has teamed up with MEI (www.meiglobal.com) to develop a new inmate trust account system that provides prison facilities with a time-saving, money-generating, and safer alternative for managing inmates' accounts. TW Vending's Alcatraz System, which can include a lobby kiosk, a money-in cash machine, vending kiosk pods, advanced soft ware and smart card system, is a self- service cash management system. It's like a bank-in-a-box. And, like few other new kiosk applications, this system highlights the positive impact on both revenue and worker productivity of a well-designed self-service system.
The Alcatraz System, which was developed in conjunction with Expresssoft.net, enables prisons to reduce accounting error, dramatically improve productivity and increase revenue by solving three problems that tax prison facility staff daily.
The first problem is internal shrinkage — a problem the convenience store industry has been wrestling with for decades. Relying on correctional officers to manually count and dispense cash not only creates an unnecessary temptation (internal theft can run rampant in jails), but also increases the likelihood of error. Innocent counting mistakes are made every day, causing accounting discrepancies and other problems. The new self-service system eliminates manual counting and runs a variety of reports to improve accountability.
A second problem is fraud. Using the common, outdated cash-counting method, counterfeit bills are not detected until the money eventually reaches the bank where it is validated, resulting in financial losses absorbed by state and local governments.
Last but not least, hundreds of hours per month are wasted by officers counting and recounting the money in those baggies and boxes — time that would be better spent managing inmates and prison programs.
"Facilities that accept cash deposits for inmate trust accounts are operating a labor-intensive and low-security process," said Dave Barclay of TW Vending. Visitors drop off cash to a staff member during certain hours on certain days; a corrections officer manually fills out a deposit form in triplicate, sends copies to appropriate departments, and adds the cash to the inmate's stored-value balance … a cigar box or Ziplock bag that is sent to accounting for processing. "It's a long, cumbersome process," Barclay said.
TW Vending's Alcatraz self-service system allows visitors to use a touchscreen to search for inmates by last name, insert cash into an MEI bill acceptor for immediate use and receive a receipt. The cash is automatically added to the inmate's trust fund. Inmates are then issued smart cards that they can use to purchase snacks, beverages and hygiene/personal items at the prison commissary and cashless vending machines. The kiosks can be programmed for up to eight functions (adding value to cards for canteen items or bail money, ordering phone cards, viewing account history, etc.). Smart cards also can be used to pay for laundry services at work-release sites, eliminating the use of cash and coins — important because coins are considered a dangerous form of contraband in prisons.
At Racine County Jail in Racine, Wis., it used to take one employee two full days to count all the money that visitors dropped off over a weekend. The Alcatraz System has cut 16 hours worth of laborious cash counting down to only two hours over the course of a single weekend, and it has eliminated at least one full-time employee. Due to the advanced validation technology of the bill acceptor, the system also has eliminated financial loss due to counterfeit bill collection and internal theft .
At the Dakota County Jail in Hastings, Minn., the system is helping to cut many hours of valuable officer time, allowing officers to spend more time doing inmate rounds.
"It used to take a long time to manage all the cash flow," said commander of detention services Barak Bjorge.
"Cash had to be counted at least six times a day, taking about two hours each time if there were no discrepancies. On visitor days when 50 to 60 visitors per day bring cash to replenish inmates' accounts, we're talking about an additional three to four hours of cash counting per night." With the Alcatraz System in place, the 300-prisoner capacity jail eliminates 12 to 15 hours a day in labor, which amounts to anywhere between 4,380 to nearly 5,500 man hours a year. Plus, the system reduces counting errors and other discrepancies. "It runs great reports for near-perfect accountability, eliminates a handling step and therefore point of error and adds another verification step to the process to catch any mistakes that do occur," said Bjorge. "It's a better way to monitor cash."
Besides improving officer productivity and reducing accounting error, the system allows Dakota County Jail to collect fees it normally lost before the system was implemented in September 2005. The prison can withdraw funds directly from an inmates' account to pay for booking fees and other site charges. For example, in accordance to a Minnesota "pay-to-stay" law, inmates must pay a portion of their incarceration charges per day. "We charge inmates $20 a day to defray some of the costs of incarceration. We can handle this cash flow efficiently and accurately using the Alcatraz System whereas we might not have been adequately equipped to collect these site fees in the past," Bjorge said.
Like retailers, most prisons handle high volumes of cash each day — particularly when booking new inmates — making a self-service system a valuable long-term investment. According to TW Vending, tens of thousands of dollars in cash come into prisons each day. As an example, just one inmate at a TW Vending pilot jail location brought in more than $14,000 in cash that had to be processed when he was booked.
"When accepting the high volume of cash that our systems do, reliability, accuracy and ability to reject counterfeit bills are all critical," Barclay said. "That's why the bill acceptor is such a key component of this system. The MEI CashFlow series of bill acceptors have proven to be outstanding in all of these areas."
So far, TW Vending has nearly 25 Alcatraz self-service systems in 16 different facilities — primarily in the Midwest. It's operating successfully at Ramsey County Jail in St. Paul, Minn., (450 inmates), Racine County Jail (750 inmates) and Dakota County Jail (240 inmates), among others. Scott County Jail, a state-of-the-art facility in Shakopee, Minn., will be implementing the system by December 2005. TW Vending is rolling out the system nationally in 2006 and hopes to generate statewide prison acceptance of the system from state to state. One such pilot program has been running for nearly 12 months in Cedar Creek, Wash. Washington State has approximately 18,000 inmates.
Retailers of all types in every industry are turning to self-service systems in one form or another in an effort to improve service, increase productivity and increase security. Now, retail isn't the only industry reaping the rewards. As one commanding officer said, "It would be a crime for prisons to not take advantage of the same advanced technology retailers are benefiting from every day."
