How Blockchain Can Be Implemented In Prisons
2.3 Million.
That's the number of people incarcerated right now in the US alone. Yet it doesn't compare to the nearly 10 million Americans who have gone to bed in a cell. So how can we ensure everything inside runs smoothly with so many people behind bars?
As expected, these prisons are flooded with bribery, assault, narcotics smuggling, and stale food concerns. But unfortunately, these issues aren't reported most of the time, trying to protect the prison's reputation, and we don't have enough people talking about these problems or even aware of them.
Despite all this, I believe there is a potential solution to all these issues; combining blockchain with existing tech. So before I tell you three ways blockchain can be implemented in prisons, let's first lay out some basics.
Understanding Blockchain
Many of us look at blockchain as the technology that powers bitcoin. While this was its original purpose, blockchain is capable of much more.
As the name indicates, a blockchain is a chain of blocks containing some form of information, or a bit more technical; it is a ledger (logbook) of transactions between nodes. Blockchain is also entirely decentralized (no third party involved) and distributed (anyone part of it has access to the ledger of transactions).
One of the main perks of blockchain is its decentralized servers. They are far more effective than centralized servers, as the system does not have a single weak point that hackers can exploit. As a result, you can ensure the data will be safe across all nodes at all times.
Now, say someone did manage to modify a single block for some reason. Perhaps to profit from faulty crypto transactions or try altering medical records. What would prevent them from getting away with this?
Well, that's where hashing comes in! An input string (mix of numbers, letters and media files) transforms into a fixed-length hash (typically 256 bits). The hash function ensures that no block can be changed or edited.
Now here's where things get even better; the blockchain contains every single block's hash function and the previous block's hash. As a result, if the data stored in a block changed, the hash would also change, so the hashes of the following blocks would no longer match, thus making it almost impossible to alter data on the blockchain.
But how do nodes verify if blocks are legitimate? Well, blockchains rely on something called a consensus algorithm. It's a process used to reach an agreement with all the peers in the network about the present state of the distributed ledger. Each new block added to the blockchain is guaranteed to be the only version of the truth accepted by all nodes.
The blockchain consensus algorithms serve as the primary means of preserving decentralization, integrity, and security.
The two most common consensus algorithms are proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS). However, both algorithms have their flaws.
So now that we understand the fundamentals behind blockchain, let’s look at few interesting ways we can use blockchain to bring enhanced security, greater transparency and instant traceabilty to the prison system.
Blockchain To Track Inmates
Recently, I read an article about using blockchain technology to protect elephants from poachers. It worked by tracking the location of the elephants using a GPS collar and documenting this information on a decentralized database that was carefully monitored to ensure the wellbeing of the animals.
Applying this concept, my view of solving the violence, narcotics and corruption problems most American prisons face; is a smartwatch.
This would work because everyone inside a prison facility would be required to wear one at all times. This includes prisoners, correctional officers, staff and visitors. However, this is different from any other smartwatch because it would work with blockchain.
Here's an example:
Inmates A and B are in a room. Since they are past the imaginary purple line, their monitor updates their location and heart rate on the blockchain. Now let's say something happens to inmate A. The watch would immediately detect a significant heart rate change, so it would record this on the blockchain. When inmate A is eventually located, the blockchain will have a complete list of everywhere and everyone that was recently around them.
Apart from the security of inmates, the monitor would also report drug usage to a blockchain. For example, illegal drugs such as cocaine or amphetamines are sure to cause disruptions in heart rate for their users. So if we could look at the blockchain afterwards and figure out a pattern of when heart rates are disrupted, eventually, we could get to the inmate before the next time they're using.
Now it's unrealistic to think that an inmate would want to keep the watch on at all times. So the smartwatch would be an add-on to the current security system on the occasion that an inmate was to remove or significantly damage the device. In this situation, the last location of the smartwatch (before it is removed or destroyed) would be recorded in the blockchain.
Unfortunately, the central issue with this solution is that the expenses involved would be pretty high. Creating smartwatches for an entire prison would require a ton of R&D and funding to make them more durable and cost-effective.
On the other hand, private prisons make an outlandish $374 million annually, and the industry as a whole is worth upwards of $9.3 billion, which means such an expenditure is relatively feasible. Whether or not these prisons decide to make this investment, it's definitely a cool concept that we could see more of soon.
Blockchain To Track Food Shipments
Probably the most attainable of the three, another intriguing way to apply blockchain is to prison supply chains. This concept isn't anything new; in fact, using blockchain in supply chain management has been around for a few years and has already been used by companies like Microsoft and UPS. But how does blockchain actually make supply chain management better?
Well, some of the critical advantages of using blockchain are:
- Audit Transparency
- Better Shipping Data
- Provenance of Shipments
- Reducing Human Error
- Food Safety & Quality
- Reducing Counterfeit Goods
What's great about it is that it's not only a proof of concept. A recent real-world example of this was in 2020 when an E. coli outbreak spanned 19 states and hospitalized 20 people, traced back to leafy greens in the US. It cost them MILLIONS to notify the public, track down the contaminated vegetables and remove them from the market.
Having been hit the hardest, Walmart decided to take a unique approach to prevent a repeat of the disaster. They now require all suppliers of leafy green vegetables to upload data onto a blockchain that tracks produce back to the farm it came from. As a result, Walmart can trace contaminated food within seconds rather than wait weeks for manual inspection, which is invaluable during a product recall.
Applying the same principle in prisons would make things easier and ensure that food coming in isn't spoiled. In addition, blockchain simplifies logistics and contracts for correctional facilities and their suppliers. Considering that this has already been accomplished before in other industries and benefits both inmates and the prison, making this a reality is certainly feasible.
Blockchain To Monitor Parolees
Without a doubt, my favourite application; using blockchain to monitor parolees. Unlike the smartwatch concept, this solves an entirely different set of problems, which I'll get to in a second. But to understand the purpose of the idea, let's cover what parole actually entails.
You can think of parole as conditional freedom for a prison inmate. The parolee gets out from behind bars but must live up to a series of responsibilities — a parolee who doesn't follow the rules risks going back into custody.
Prison authorities typically supervise parolees through mandatory visits with parole officers. In addition, parole services (usually a branch of the department of corrections) may provide transitional services tailored to a parolee's needs, such as shelter or counselling.
There are a ton of expenses and commitments involved in the process, especially for the parole officers appointed to investigate, report on, and supervise the behaviour of sentenced offenders. Unfortunately, less than half of all parolees complete parole without violating a condition of release, running or committing a new crime. As a result, over 200,000 parolees return to prison each year, which is quite a lot concerning the number of parole officers in the US. Once again, here's where blockchain comes in.
Unlike my smartwatch conception, this idea is actually being tested out right now in Zhongshan, China. To enhance safety in the city, the city's justice department launched a blockchain and ankle monitor system to survey parolee movements.
Community service centers that have deployed this technology enable parolees to check in and complete daily duties within the city. Using the blockchain system, they claim the ministry of justice could track convict movements around the clock and get to them easily. Due to the distributed nature of convict data, staff at community corrections agencies and law enforcement agencies everywhere can access the data at any time and take appropriate action if a convict does not follow the required routine.
Ultimately, they could save a ton of money and reduce the human resources required to physically follow parolees while ensuring they obey laws and perform community service.
So if we're seeing all these revolutionizing blockchain applications in other parts of the world, why isn't there anything similar in the Western world?
What's Holding Us Back
At this point, two main things are holding us back from turning these concepts into reality; blockchain is too new for us, and the prison system isn't considered a priority.
The truth is that inmates are constantly dehumanized. They are viewed at the bottom of society as no one cares about what they must endure or put up with. This is why blockchain will drastically improve the likelihood of identifying and dealing with crimes in prisons, hold prisons accountable for serving spoiled food, and make parolees easier to monitor.
Key Takeaways
- The prison system is full of corruption and other overlooked issues
- Blockchain can be utilized to track inmate/guard movements to reduce violence and corruption
- We can apply the technology to track food shipments and ensure a certain standard of food is sustained
- We can also monitor parolees more effectively by combining blockchain with existing ankle monitors
- These solutions aren't yet a reality, likely because blockchain is too new for us and because nobody wants to take the responsibility of working with prisons
- My take: as blockchain becomes more of a societal norm, we may see the technology applied in various aspects of the prison system
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