As a correctional officer, understanding your surroundings, identifying potential threats, and making informed decisions are essential skills for effective inmate management. Situational awareness can save your life while protecting the health and safety of your inmate population.
When it comes to knowing what supplies inmates are eligible to receive – and what they’re not – can be extremely challenging if you’re relying on verbal communication and log sheets. Any breakdown in communication, such as failing to pass information on to a new shift officer, can have serious consequences.
Luckily, Command Cloud helps prevent the opportunity of giving a dangerous item to high-risk inmates. How? In this blog, we’ll talk about:
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The Supply Module in Mobile Command XR
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What items are considered “Dangerous Items”
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How to set inmate classifications in Command Cloud
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How Command Cloud helps prevent incidents from happening
What’s the Supply Module?
The Supply module is considered a “core” GUARDIAN RFID module as it’s one of the most commonly used areas of Command Cloud – with the other core modules being:
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Security Check
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Observation Check
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Meals
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Recreation
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Headcount
The Supply module’s high frequency of use is driven by being at the intersection of compliance and defensibility. To meet basic welfare requirements, it’s essential to log when inmates were issued (and received) personal hygiene items, clean uniforms, bedding, and any other jail-issued items to meet facility-specific or overall state standards.
The Supply Module usually features a set of item-based WordBlocks. Common examples of WordBlocks used by Warriors include Toilet Paper, Clippers, Uniform, Bedding, Mail, Legal Mail, Commissary Delivered, etc.
Within the Supply module, not only can you log what you’re supplying to inmates, but you also track whether that item should be returned back to staff or not. Supply-based WordBlocks can be classified as a “Returnable” item, such as a rulebook or inmate uniform. To classify an item as “returnable” means that the item doesn’t necessarily pose a safety risk to the inmate or other inmates, but the item still must be returned to staff at a certain point in time.
How can you tell the difference between items are that returnable versus non-returnable? Easy. Items that are classified as returnable can be easily identified as they are the exact same as the Supplies icon, but have a left-pointing arrow implying that the item needs to be returned.
What are Dangerous Items?
Other Supply WordBlocks can be classified as “Dangerous Items” meaning the item does pose a safety risk to the inmate, staff, or other inmates. Common examples of “Dangerous Items” include razors and clippers. In juvenile detention centers, a “Dangerous Item” can include pencils, whereas adult jails don’t frequently care to track when inmates have pencils.
When your system administrator creates a Supply WordBlock classified as a “Dangerous Item” and this item or supply is given to an inmate – Command Cloud tracks the time and date the item was issued – and by whom – and reminds staff when that item needs to be returned.
How Do You Set Inmate Classifications in Command Cloud?
Knowing whether an inmate is eligible to receive certain items, particularly those classified as “dangerous items,” is essential and directly tied to their inmate classification. Inmate classifications include whether the inmate is suicidal, in protective custody, in administrative segregation, has a gang affiliation, is known to be violent, etc.
How does Command Cloud set inmate classification levels?
The easiest way to manage and use inmate classifications is to integrate your JMS with Command Cloud. This way, the JMS can communicate with Command Cloud, sharing classification levels for each inmate. And if your JMS doesn’t have the ability to send classification levels to Command Cloud, we have a solution for that too.
In Mission Command, you can use the special status module to manually assign a status to an inmate (e.g. suicidal). This way, you’re not at the mercy of your JMS to support this functionality if it doesn’t support this feature out of the box.
How Does Command Cloud Help Prevent Dangerous Items From Going to Inmates with a Special Status?
As soon as either the JMS interface runs or an authorized user creates and assigns a special status to an inmate in Mission Command, Mobile Command XR will sync the updated status and automatically trigger a warning any time a correctional officer might attempt to issue a “Dangerous Item” to an inmate with a special status of “Suicidal.”
Can an Inmate eSign for a Returnable Item or Dangerous Item?
Yes, they can. Your Command Cloud system administrator can apply a number of configurations to a Supply WordBlock including the ability to require an inmate signature anytime that item is issued to an inmate.
An example of where this can be helpful is if you’re using the Supply module to deliver certified legal mail or the inmate’s commissary order.
What Kind of Reporting Can You Generate About Supplies?
One powerful example of the reporting you can generate is the ability to track how often an inmate requests a certain supply item—particularly items that are frequently hoarded, such as toilet paper.
Many correctional officers can relate to supplying an inmate with toilet paper, only to later learn that the officer on the next shift also supplied that same inmate with more toilet paper. If the passing of supplies isn’t explicitly documented, officers can only trust a he-said-she-said system. Then BOOM - the cycle of hoarding toilet paper has begun.
With Command Cloud, officers can know precisely when items have been offered and given to inmates. And with Operational Intelligence, officers can pinpoint these types of anomalies quickly to prevent inmates from abusing facility supplies.
Situational awareness is vital for correctional officers to maintain safety and manage inmates effectively. This includes knowing which supplies inmates are eligible to receive and ensuring that high-risk inmates do not get their hands on something dangerous. The Supply module in Mobile Command XR helps officers manage and track supplies, ensuring overall facility compliance and safety, thus meeting welfare standards and maintaining defensibility.
