THE telephone conversations in prison They usually deal with personal matters. In many cases, prisoners comment on the situation of their families or the daily problems of confinement. However, there are profiles who take advantage of this contact to coordinate money movements or settle pending accounts. The attempts to planning crimes take advantage of the confidence offered by communication with the outside world.
This continuous exchange of information has become a valuable source for those who analyze the security of prison centers, because from these interviews they can extract risk signals this previously went unnoticed.
Securus managers assure that their tool contributed to the dismantling of criminal networks
Secure Technologiestelecommunications company present in more than 2,000 prisons in the United States, is developing an artificial intelligence system capable of analyze inmate calls, messages and emails with the aim of anticipating crimes. The company began this work in 2023 and is applying it experimentally in various centers, where its technology examines conversation fragments in real time to flag possible criminal activities.
The president of Securus Technologies, Kevin Elderhe explained to the magazine MIT Technology Review that the system allows us to detect when a prisoner might be planning a crime. The search tool language expressions and patterns linked to drug trafficking, extortion or escapes, and transmits suspicious fragments to human agents for examination
Elder said that this artificial intelligence has already been used to dismantle human trafficking networks and organized gang activities inside prisons. He also highlighted that the company collaborates with prisons that house both awaiting trial and convicted prisoners, and even with centers associated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the president of the company, the objective is improve the effectiveness of supervision in times of staff shortage and not to exercise indiscriminate surveillance.
To train its models, the company used millions of files accumulated over years of activity. These include a seven-year series of appeals from the Texas prison system that served to create a model for the state. Other models have been adapted to particularities of different counties Americans. All audios are converted to text using speech recognition and stored in databases which artificial intelligence examines for anomalies and repeated patterns. The prisoners and their interlocutors are informed that conversations are recordedeven though these recordings cannot be used to train the technology.
Activists denounce the use of personal data with no alternative for prisoners
Bianca Tylekexecutive director of the prisoners’ rights group Worth Rises, warned in the same publication that this system involves “coercive consent“, since detainees have no other way to communicate with their families. He stressed that in addition, calls have a cost that prisoners have to paytherefore “not only are they not paid for the use of their data, but they are billed for its collection”.
Other civil rights advocates, such as Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, believe that this technology increases surveillance with virtually no judicial oversight and that Securus accumulates history of inappropriate recordings calls between detainees and lawyers. The company maintains that data analysis does not seek to track specific individuals, but rather to identify general illicit behavior in the prison’s communications system.
The growth of these tools coincides with a regulatory change in the United States. In 2024, the Federal Communications Commission approved a reform limiting recording and surveillance costs that companies could pass on to prisoners, but protests from sheriffs’ associations and pressure from telecommunications companies led to a revision. In June, the commissioner Brendan Carr announced the postponement of reforms, and in October the agency again allowed security costs related to surveillance and artificial intelligence systems to be shifted to inmates.
Securus has defended before MIT Technology Review that these measures are essential to ensure the security of the installations and ensure the protection of staff and the public. The commissioner Anna Gomez He voted against it, saying law enforcement should bear the costs of surveillance, not the families of detainees.
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