RFID Journal LIVE! 2023 will feature end-user companies discussing RFID’s use in various industries, as well as exhibitors offering tagging solutions for multiple applications. To learn more, visit the event’s website.
RFID Journal will host LIVE! 2023 next week in Orlando, Fla., and the team is preparing for what looks to be another standout event. Our annual LIVE! conference and exhibition, like our website, has always been a great place to learn about new use cases of radio frequency identification (RFID) and other Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, so I thought I’d share a use case I read about this past week.
The Smith County Sheriff’s Office, in Tyler, Texas, has passed its annual Texas State Jail Inspection for the first time since 2019, after deploying an RFID-based inmate-tracking system supplied by Guardian RFID. The Smith County Jail houses a daily population of 970 inmates, on average, and can accommodate a maximum capacity of 1,149. In order to achieve compliance and protect the agency’s civil liabilities, the jail sought to digitally transform its inmate-management process.
According to Guardian RFID, the Smith County Jail had previously utilized Timekeeping Systems‘ Guard1 solution, but it found that technology’s data-collection and reporting functions were not a good fit for its specific needs, requiring the jail to still maintain paper logs. Following a number of complications, the jail switched over to Guardian RFID’s solution within only 90 days, which included Wi-Fi rollout and integration with a jail-management system provided by Tyler Technologies.
Using Guardian RFID’s hardened RFID tags, RFID wristbands and Android-based Spartan devices to manage, monitor and track inmates, jail personnel gained real-time security with the capturing of inmate movements and activities, as required by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Within the first 30 days of taking the company’s Operational Intelligence visual analytics platform live, in fact, Smith County Jail achieved a score of 100 percent compliance.
The system has enabled the sheriff’s office to capture prisoner data quickly, reliably and comprehensively, including court transports, positive ID headcounts, inmate meal provision, and records of program attendance and medication administration. This has led to a reduction in inmate complaints, Guardian RFID indicates, as well as an increased ability to protect the agency’s civil liability, and to comply with state jail standards.
The company’s native cloud platform includes reports designed to prepare jails for inspections with accuracy and efficiency, and to help them visualize headcounts in real time and pinpoint any inmates not part of the counts. The system has helped the sheriff’s office create stronger transparency and agency accountability, and to perform real-time performance analysis to meet its inmate-management objectives. This is a great example of the positive outcome businesses and organizations can hope to achieve when they deploy radio frequency identification technologies.
If you’d like to hear about other impressive use cases of RFID and IoT solutions, be sure to attend RFID Journal LIVE! 2023. The event will take place at Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center on May 9–11, with more than 150 exhibitors from 26 countries showcasing tags, readers, software and implementation services. LIVE! will feature an extensive conference program with companies from retail, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics and other sectors presenting real-world case studies from which attendees can learn. New products are introduced at the conference, so you will be among the first to see the latest offerings. Learn more at the event’s website.
Rich Handley is the editor of RFID Journal and has been with the company since 2005. Outside the RFID world, Rich has authored, edited or contributed to numerous books about pop culture. You can contact Rich via email.