CASCADE COUNTY — The Cascade County Detention Center prevented four suicides in March, and they credited their new Guardian RFID system for helping keep the inmates safe.
WATCH:
Managing inmates at the Cascade County Detention Center is a big responsibility.
Jesse Slaughter, Sheriff of Cascade County, said, “The constant checking and checks that we have to do on them can become very cumbersome.”
This is why Sheriff Slaughter worked to implement the Guardian RFID system.
The Guardian website says it provides devices and systems designed for "managing, monitoring, and tracking inmates in-custody to mitigate risk, maximize defensibility, and strengthen compliance."
Slaughter said, “What this system does is it assigns every inmate an alert and alerts the detention officers that that inmate needs to be checked on again.”
Already the technology has proven useful, helping detention center workers save four inmates from suicide between March 14 and March 18.
Slaughter said, “That window in which they could harm somebody or harm themselves is closed and verified.”
While the system does not replace the work of a human, it helps the officers do their job at a higher level.
Slaughter said, “I feel that the technologies can make us more efficient and basically make us work smarter, not harder.”
The system was voted on by the Cascade County Commission in April of last year.
Cascade County Commissioner Joe Briggs said, “I think it was a very good product that this, that the sheriff brought forward. And I think a good decision of utilizing the taxpayer’s money to do some preventative things.”
The project cost around $75,000, and Commissioner Briggs says he is happy to see it helping officers at the detention center.
Briggs said, “So whenever any of these things that we expend funds on prove themselves, it's kind of a validation that our processes are working.”
The Guardian RFID system has helped prison workers be more efficient with their inmate rosters, where they can monitor and report updates as they happen as opposed to once they get back to a computer.
