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Big Brother as a Contract Monitor: An Assessment of the Use of Contract Staff to Monitor Offender Communications

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Abstract

The privatization of prison services is a growing trend in the field of corrections; however, this growth has not been matched by evaluative research. This study examines the use of contract staff to supplement state intelligence investigators’ efforts to monitor outgoing offender telephone communications for evidence of illicit activity at 18 adult institutions in a Midwestern department of corrections. Percent-change models and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) modeling are used to examine aggregates of intelligence reports documenting drug, expressive, instrumental, and administrative violations. Our findings indicate that the introduction of contract services was associated with substantial increases in the number of intelligence reports filed within each of these categories. Furthermore, these results suggest that the use of privatized services that supplement rather than replace public efforts appear to be an ethical, efficient, and cost-effective alternative to comprehensive privatization.

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Notes

  1. During the post-intervention observation period, GEX monitored 5.22 % of all inmate phone calls. This amounted to the monitoring of approximately 2 million phone calls with an average duration of approximately 11 min.

  2. GEX employees undergo several weeks of training prior to deployment. During this period, they receive instruction in the concept of reasonable suspicion and are introduced to a number of slang or coded terms commonly used by inmates to describe activities from drug use and paraphernalia to assault and theft. This training is similar to that which is received by IU investigators, who must also establish reasonable suspicion prior to any official intervention.

  3. As an example, the initial intelligence may have documented an inmate telling a call recipient to “pick up some of them 24/7’s and put them on the highway.” The term “24/7” is slang commonly used to refer to crack cocaine, while “highway” is an established method of introducing the drug into the correctional facility. In the case of an established method of introduction, the need to provide details over the phone is eliminated. Thus, the IU investigator is required to trace the formation of the pipeline backwards through calls. This becomes particularly tedious, as inmates involved in drug trafficking often use the identification numbers of multiple fellow inmates and encourage their non-incarcerated co-conspirators to frequently change phone numbers. As the investigator moves backwards through calls, he or she will invariably encounter the names of numerous other individuals, amounts of funds being transferred, verification numbers for money transfers, as and evidence of other criminal activity in the community. It is not uncommon, for example, for a report that began with 1 or 2 suspects and involved a single crime to end with a dozen or more suspects, multiple crimes (both within the institution and community), and evidence of thousands of dollars in wire transfers.

  4. This may be attributed to difficulties associated with interpretation of slang or coded language, as well as the non-instigative mandate maintained by GEX. One report, for example, documented an inmatens statement that he was ‘banging it’ the day before with another inmate. The phrase ‘banging it’ is commonly used to describe intravenous drug use, physical assault, or simply associating with another inmate. The IU later determined, via monitoring of additional calls, that the inmate was referring to associating with another inmate in his housing unit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. University Avenue, Little Rock, AR, 72204, USA

    Rick Dierenfeldt

  2. Department of Criminal Justice, Legal Studies, and Social Work, Missouri Western State University, 4525 Downs Drive, St. Joseph, MO, USA

    Greg Lindsteadt

  3. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. University Avenue, Little Rock, AR, 72204, USA

    Jacob Laan & Kristen N. Sobba

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  1. Rick Dierenfeldt
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  2. Greg Lindsteadt
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  4. Kristen N. Sobba
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Correspondence to Rick Dierenfeldt.

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Dierenfeldt, R., Lindsteadt, G., Laan, J. et al. Big Brother as a Contract Monitor: An Assessment of the Use of Contract Staff to Monitor Offender Communications. Am J Crim Just 41, 279–295 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-015-9295-5

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