Biometrics are entering prisons, jails and penitentiaries, bringing identity management to an area of law enforcement that needs efficiency and accuracy instead of paperwork. Today, the spread of inmate identity management made it to the Netherlands as Unisys Corporation’s local subsidiary, Unisys Nederland N.V., announced that it has been selected but the Dutch Custodial Institutions Service to bring biometrics to the nation’s penitentiaries.
The agreement will see Unisys delivering, implementing and managing a new Basic Provision Biometrics solution for more than 50 facilities across the Netherlands. The system will replace the Dutch Custodial Institutions Service’s existing Basic Provision Biometrics, aimed to bring efficiency on all fronts: easier integration, convenient user interface, higher speeds and lower costs.
“Identity verification within penitentiaries should be a foolproof system,” said A.L.C. Roelofs, the deputy director of the Dutch Custodial Institutions Service. “To achieve this goal we are always looking for the best solutions to fit within our new information architecture.”
Expected to go live at the end of 2014, the Unisys solution uses biometric data to verify inmate identities while in custody. The Dutch Custodial Institutions Service is responsible for about 12,000 prison cells, each which can find itself occupied by four or five different inmates in a given year. The Basic Provision Biometrics program helps keep the accompanying records straight as detainees depart, receive transfer or begin their sentence.
Last week, findBIOMETRICS reported on a U.S. patent filed by Telmate for Individual Location Tracking in Detention Environments. The solution will work with an automatic jail management system to keep track of inmates, recording their positions within the detention center. The idea here, as with the Unisys solution, will be to automate record keeping and cut down on now redundant administrative time.
—
July 2, 2014 – by Peter B. Counter
Follow Us