"Security and safety are clearly the primary concerns when implementing an effective prison management system," said Yuichiro Morita, PFI Project Development Section, Correction Bureau of Ministry of Justice. "The AeroScout Prisoner and Staff Tracking solution offers flexibility and scalability, and having both indoor and outdoor capabilities increases our visibility of inmates. Importantly, we have drastically reduced our staff-to-inmate ratio, especially when compared to conventional prisons."

Shimane Asahi Rehabilitation Program Center is the newest and largest prison developed by Japan's Private Finance Initiative and is managed under the Japanese government's Correction Bureau, Ministry of Justice. The correctional facility uses the AeroScout Wi-Fi RFID solution to improve prison management by streamlining the way it tracks prisoner, officer and staff movement throughout the facility. The system has been in operation since October 2008 and will ultimately include 3,000 AeroScout Wi-Fi Tags when at full capacity next year.

The Shimane facility encompasses 325,000 square meters, with almost 100,000 square meters of floor space, and so it requires the scalability, reliability and flexibility that the AeroScout solution delivers. AeroScout Wi-Fi Tags, Location Receivers, Exciters and Location Engine are integrated into a unified security management system, enabling prison officers to monitor the location of each inmate and compare it with their planned schedule of movements and activities for the day. Automatic alerts are sent if any discrepancies occur between scheduled and actual locations. For example, officers can easily identify if prisoners are in the wrong area of the prison or are moving too close to a forbidden zone.

A key benefit of the AeroScout solution is its combination of both indoor and outdoor tracking, which allows officers to closely monitor inmate movement across the entire grounds within one system. As such, prisoners are able to move from one place to another without escort by prison guards, cultivating a better culture among inmates. This not only reduces the time officers spend tracking individual prisoners, but also lessens the feeling of animosity inmates may feel, contributing to a reduction in stress-related incidents.

"Large correctional facilities like Shimane Asahi Rehabilitation Program Center have complex logistical and operational challenges," said Thomas Lui, Asia-Pacific Vice President at AeroScout. "The Japanese government is spearheading many innovative solutions to these types of issues through the Private Finance Initiative, and AeroScout was able to offer significant additional value as part of the overall prison management system. The success of the Shimane project to date provides an excellent model for other facilities to emulate, and thus we are seeing increasing demand from other prisons in the region."

By Robert Hoskins

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