PINELLAS COUNTY SHERIFF"S OFFICE DEPLOYS WORLD"S FIRST

MOBILE INMATE VIDEO VISITATION BUS

CLEARWATER, FLORIDA - The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office with equipment and support supplied by Strike Industries, launched the world's first Mobile Inmate Video Visitation Bus.  The Sheriff's Office is rolling out a video visitation bus that will be available for public access at remote sites through in the community to facilitate visitations for residents with inmates at the Pinellas County Jail who might not otherwise be able to make the trip to the Jail's current Visitation Center.

The bus was purchased and equipped with federal monies from the SCAAP Award (State Criminal Alien Assistance Program) which is administered by Department of Justice. It has been outfitted with five lap top computers/workstations that will be utilized for the purpose of conducting the remote inmate video visitation.  Visitors can see and hear the inmates by looking at the laptop screen. It's very similar to the current video visitation at the jail. The system deployment by Strike Industries includes the addition of five codec gateways to the existing inmate video visitation system.  This will allow the inmate visitors on the bus to visit any inmate throughout the jail facility in the same manner as visitors at Visitation Center.

When the bus is rolled out, it will travel into various Pinellas County communities and be available on location to residents wishing to conduct video visitations with inmates at the jail. Initially two sites have been selected and approved. The pilot program locations are the James B. Sanderlin Family Center located at 2335 22nd Avenue South in St. Petersburg and the Ridgecrest/ Omni-Branch YMCA located at 1801 119th Street in Largo.

The goal of the video visitation bus is to facilitate visitations for residents who may face transportation challenges and or other hardships in coming to the jail's Video Visitation Center. In addition, as the visitation center is currently operating at capacity, it is anticipated that the bus will ease the traffic at the center on 49th Street and reduce the wait time for visitation appointments.

There are currently 67 video visitation booths for visitors at the jail's Visitation Center. Roughly two out of three inmates at the jail have been charged but not convicted and are awaiting trial. There are about 8,000 inmate visits per month, each allotted one hour. Demand is so high that visitors can wait two or three weeks to get an appointment. The bus will help to ease some of that demand and if it's successful, more could follow.

The technology will also allow for other benefits. For example, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement frequently send officers from Tampa to the jail in Pinellas to conduct immigration evaluations. Very soon, the immigration officials will be able to conduct the interviews online using the same codec gateway connections with considerable savings of time and money. More Information on Inmate Video Visitation and Related TeleJustice Applications...   TBO.com TampaBay.com TampaBays10

www.videovisitation.com