Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images
For years, a US telecommunications company has been building proprietary AI models using phone and video calls made by inmates in US prisons as building blocks.
According to has MIT Technology ReviewSecurus Technologies, a private equity firm, has been developing its AI products since 2023, but it has many recorded conversations dating back much longer. The exact sources of this data are unknown, but are believed to include facilities ranging from local jails to long-term prisons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.
The AI models are designed to detect “criminal activity” in real time, Securus President Kevin Elder said. Technical review. One model, for example, was trained on seven years of calls from inmates in Texas state prisons for use in Texas, suggesting that the company adapts its different AI models to local or at least statewide conditions.
“We can point this great language model to a whole treasure trove. [of data] to detect and understand when crimes are being considered or contemplated, so you can detect them much earlier in the cycle,” Elder told the publication.
Those who speak on either side of a phone call with an inmate are told their conversation is being recorded, but as Bianca Tylek, executive director of the inmate advocacy group The value increases According to him, this system amounts to “coercive consent”.
“There is literally no other way to communicate with your family,” she said.
John Dukes, who spent time at Sing Sing Prison in New York, recalled in a interview with The interception that Securus was testing voice recognition software on him in 2019.
“Here’s another part of myself that I had to give up again in this prison system,” he said at the time.
Now thanks to developments in AI, the system is much more advancedenabling voice recognition of detainees after and before trial, as well as their family, friends and lawyers.
By Technical reviewThe ultimate goal is for Securus to provide prison authorities with a versatile tool to either monitor specific inmates suspected of organizing crimes by telephone or conduct random inspections of the general population.
All of this underscores a frightening reality: In the United States, mass incarceration is a hugely profitable business. Prison telephone systems, for example, constitute a formal industry called Inmate Calling Services (ICS). According to At Prison Journalism Projectthe annual US ICS market is $1.2 billionand is largely dominated by two companies. One of the two is Securus.
In a world where data is the new oil – and in a country where almost 2 million people are incarcerated — it seems that a phone call from an inmate to his home is no longer just a exorbitant fees on one family’s bill, but raw material for AI designed to monitor the next.
Learn more about prisons: What are the ethics of strapping VR headsets onto inmates in solitary confinement?
