Prisons Restrict Inmate Mail, Consider AI to Analyze Calls

Prisons in the United States could get more high-tech help keeping tabs on what inmates are saying, after a key House of Representatives panel pressed for a report to study the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze prisoners’ phone calls, reports Reuters. The call for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to further explore the technology, to help prevent violent crime and suicide, accompanies a recently passed $81 billion-plus spending bill to fund the DOJ and other federal agencies in 2022. The technology can automatically transcribe inmates’ phone calls analyzing their tone of voice and flagging certain words or phrases, including slang, that officials pre-program into the system. Privacy groups say the technology could amplify racial bias in the justice system and unfairly subject prisoners to unaccountable artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, Slate reports that more facilities are moving toward restricting traditional physical correspondence to inmates in favor of scanning and printing or electronically delivering letters. In March 2020, the Bureau of Prisons launched a mail scanning pilot with Smart Communications in two federal facilities, USP Canaan and FCI Beckley. The pilot (which excluded legal mail) ended in June, but the agency is “considering the expansion of mail scanning pending funding,” according to BOP spokesperson Donald Murphy. The BOP claims that the new technology is successful in “reducing introduction of synthetic drugs via mail” and “opioid-associated inmate health problems and related assaultive behavior.” A class action suit recently filed in Massachusetts, for example, claims that the state’s method of testing mail for drugs is “wrong nearly 80 percent of the time.