In Hillsborough County the Sheriff's Office and County Commissioners are dedicating their new jail. The facility will house 768 prisoners and was built at a cost of 26 million dollars. The county administrator, Dan Kleman has stated that the "promise to county residents was to put a high priority on public safety". As part of this decision, the department decided to install video visitation for inmates in this and other county jail facilities. While video visitation has been installed in other facilities, the HCSO decided that they wanted the freedom of a more open system that could be used not only for visitation but for other types of communication as well. Capt. Tom Hall, the transition team leader, has stated that, "the system will not only improve the safety in the facility but will also improve productivity among the staff." No longer will the Sheriff's Office staff need to escort visitors through the facility to the inmate pod visitation rooms, instead these rooms will house the video visitation system which will provide communication between the inmate and visitor stations located outside of the inmate areas.

The Video Visitation system when completed will provide communication to all of the inmate facilities from one central visitation center located at the new Falkenburg Rd. facility. The completed system will consist of a total of 152 stations located in three facilities. Brinckmann & Associates, an Atlanta based videoconferencing application developer and systems integrator, worked closely with the Sheriff's Information Systems department to integrate the Visitation System within there infrastructure. By integrating several vendors' products, which include Intel, Cisco, Intergraph, and several others an open architecture was developed that will allow other county agencies to communicate with the inmates and staff at the facilities. Among those that wish to communicate are the Public Defenders Office and the Parole Department. Since the system will utilize the Departments ATM backbone, all communications are TCP/IP based. This means that if a county support agency, such as the Public Defenders Office, needs to communicate with the facility a connection to the departments network need only be established.

Phase one of the project has been completed, a total of 48 systems are providing video visitation for the inmates located at Falkenburg Rd. Phase two and three consist of expanding the system to include the new complex at Falkenburg Rd., Morgan Street Jail, and the Public Defenders office. Phase three will consist of bringing Orient Rd. Jail on-line for communication with the Public Defenders Office. The total project is slated for completion by the end of this year. At a total cost of 1.2 million dollars, the system did not cost county residents a penny; the entire project was funded 100% using the Inmate Canteen Funds, which are funds designated for projects that directly benefit the inmate population. By providing a safer environment, we feel we have achieved that.

As previously stated, phase two will consist of bringing the Public Defenders on-line. This part of the project will enable the Public Defenders to conduct client interviews with the inmates without the need for travel to any of the detention facilities. The Public Defender started implementing this system approximately 8 months ago. With over 90 video conferencing units in their environment, one on each attorney's desktop, they are well equipped to reap the benefits of this technology. Mike Effner, the Information Services Director for the Public Defender, has stated that this technology will improve productivity in his office by more than 100%.

In summary, due to the open architecture of this system, unlike other closed circuit systems, we can provide total communication to all interested parties with this technology. In fact, even if the agency is not connected to the Counties Wide Area Network, another means of accessing this system is through ISDN links or through "Wireless Bridge" technology.

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