Securus Listens Carefully to Incarcerated Individuals and Friends/Family Members Before Making Investments in Technologies

DALLAS, TX October 17, 2017/Business Wire/ — Securus Technologies, a leading provider of civil and criminal justice technology solutions for public safety, investigation, corrections and monitoring announced today that its product development and acquisition program is significantly shaped by input from incarcerated individuals, friends/family members, corrections, and law enforcement officials. “We don’t purchase a company or technology or develop a product with our software teams without input from our jail/prison customers and incarcerated individuals and their friends and family members,” said Richard A. (“Rick”) Smith, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Securus Technologies. “We have millions of direct interactions each year with incarcerated individuals, friends/family, wardens, jailers, sheriffs, parolees, facility IT staffs, and others in the industry, so we watch, look, and try to understand on an explicit and implicit basis – what they need for efficiency, recidivism reduction, incarcerated individual job searches, successful entry into society, safety, investigative, incarcerated individual education, and security reasons. There is a wealth of information in front of us – so we use that to make decisions on acquisitions and our development efforts,” said Smith. Here are some examples of using customer-specific data for product development and acquisition investments:
Facility or incarcerated individual/Friend/Family Issue(s) Securus Response
1) I want to have cheaper audio communications rates 1) Securus invests +$500 million over a decade in developing the largest and most efficient incarcerated individual focused VoIP platform in the world. The platform allows Securus to offer more incarcerated individual/friend/family products and to decrease average audio incarcerated individual calling rates by +25%.
2) Video Requests
  • I want to see my family via video versus audio
  • I want to allow incarcerated individuals to visit family members onsite via video
  • I want to attend my son’s graduation and I’m in prison/jail
 
2) Purchases Primonics and invests $40 million in video communication with additional development
3) Contraband Wireless/Security Issues
  • Contraband wireless units found in facilities are a big problem
 
3) Securus purchases CellBlox and negotiates exclusives with Vanu Tactical and Harris Corporation; Securus invests $50 million
4) Facilities request Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to better monitor and track incarcerated individual health 4) Securus purchases Cara Clinicals and provides EMR products; invests $10 million
5) Incarcerated individuals request job availability information 5) Securus negotiates exclusive with JobView and allows incarcerated individuals access to job availability. Estimated job searches for 2017 approximates 7 million.
6) Incarcerated individuals, Corrections Officials, and Friends and Family request tablets to facilitate incarcerated individual learning, religious studies, incarcerated individual communications, and recidivism reduction 6) Securus develops SecureView tablet and acquires JPay; invests $290 million
7) Facilities request interactive voice response systems (IVR) to respond to questions more quickly from incarcerated individuals and friends and family members 7) Securus invests in Telerus, the largest provider of incarcerated individual IVR systems to respond to incarcerated individual and friend and family requests; Securus invests $10 million
8) Facilities request that Securus offer GPS parolee tracking devices and offer bundled products to save money and improve incarcerated individual release rates while maintaining security of society 8) Securus invests more than $100 million in parolee monitoring devices to provide avenue to decrease prison/jail populations in a safe/secure way
    “The point here is that we listen carefully to our facility customers AND our incarcerated individual/friends/family customers – and do our best to build and buy products to satisfy their requirements. We put almost everything that we make in terms of profit back into our business – that allows us to have the broadest product set that exists today. That commitment helps all of our customers. It’s an investment in their futures by Securus. We serve on the front line of serving incarcerated individuals and friends/family in responsible ways – and to be more than ‘lip service’ to improving lives. We made a +$1 billion investment and are proud of that,” concluded Smith.

About Securus Technologies

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, an Aventiv Technologies company, serving more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,200,000 incarcerated individuals across North America, Securus Technologies is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, incarcerated individual self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. Securus Technologies connecting what matters®. For more information, please visit SecurusTechnologies.tech.