The prison guard robot prototype is set to go on trial in March

Robot wardens are about to join the ranks of South Korea’s prison service.

A jail in the eastern city of Pohang plans to run a month-long trial with three of the automatons in March. Report by the BBC News.

The machines will monitor inmates for abnormal behaviour. Researchers say they will help reduce the workload for other guards.

South Korea aims to be a world leaders in robotics. Business leaders believe the field has the potential to become a major export industry.

The three 5ft-high (1.5m) robots involved in the prison trial have been developed by the Asian Forum for Corrections, a South Korean group of researchers who specialise in criminality and prison policies.

It said the robots move on four wheels and are equipped with cameras and other sensors that allow them to detect risky behaviour such as violence and suicide.

Prof Lee Baik-Chu, of Kyonggi University, who led the design process, said the robots would alert human guards if they discovered a problem.

“As we’re almost done with creating its key operating system, we are now working on refining its details to make it look more friendly to inmates,” the professor told the Yonhap news agency.

The one-month trial will cost 1bn won (£554,000) and is being sponsored by the South Korean government.

It is the latest in a series of investments made by the state to develop its robotics industry.

The country’s Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in January that it had spent the equivalent of £415m on research in the sector between 2002 and 2010.

It said the aim was to compete with other countries, such as Japan, which are also exploring the industry’s potential.

In October the ministry said the Korean robot market had recorded 75% growth over the past two years and was now worth about £1bn.

Robots everywhere

Success stories reported by the Korean media include Samsung Techwin’s sale of a robotic surveillance system to Algeria and shipments of the humanoid Hubo robot to six universities in the US.

The South Korean defence company DoDAAM is also developing robotic gun turrets for export which can be programmed to open fire automatically.

Within the country English-speaking robotic teaching assistants are already being deployed in some schools to help children to practise their pronunciation.

The Joongang Daily newspaper reported in August that a company called Showbo had begun mass producing a robot that bowed to shop customers and told them about promotions on offer.

Other firms say they hope to start selling robots to help care for the elderly before the end of the decade, and personal assistant robots further down the line.

The government is also building a Robot Land theme park in the north-west city of Incheon to help highlight the country’s success. Planners say they hope 2.8 million people will visit each year.

Leroy Kirkegard has been named the new warden at Montana State Prison.

HELENA — Montana native and Las Vegas detention official Leroy Kirkegard was named Tuesday as the new warden at Montana State Prison, becoming the first new warden at the prison in 16 years.

NYS Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Fischer said, “We’re not doing this because we want to; we’re doing this because we’re facing a budget crisis … We have permission to close three camps, and on my authority close seven annexes. And that’s part of the 09-10 budget.”

The closures include Camp Mount McGregor in Saratoga County, Camp Gabriels in Franklin County, and Camp Pharsalia in Chenango County, as well as seven annexes around the state, which Fischer said will save taxpayer money. “The savings is considerable,” he said. “We’re talking maybe $20 million this year, and far more the next year.” Fischer said, “Why I’m phasing this in is the fact I’m losing 80 correction’s officers a month through normal attrition. So for, now until, say, October when I close the annexes, we’re going to see a lot of attrition.”

But the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association said the closures simply don’t make sense, that the state can’t handle fewer facilities, and argues savings should come from streamlining the whole system. NYSCOPBA said the closures may force workers to move to keep their job, even after a two-percent reduction in the workforce last year.

“Unless I’ve totally misread this thing, I think we’re extremely close to an agreement, and public safety will not be affected,” Hendershott said.  The Sheriff’s Office could take a $7.6 million cut to its general fund, which primarily pays for law-enforcement patrol, and a $10.1 million cut to its detention fund, which covers jail operations, memos show. Officials are still negotiating the budget and said these are tentative cuts. The memos indicate that public safety would not be jeopardized by the following cuts, a goal of both sides:

• Eliminate vacant civilian positions to save $2.3 million. It is unclear how many positions could be cut and how many are now filled.

• Discontinue vehicle rentals to save $411,000. The rentals are used for investigations, picking up abused animals and transporting equipment.

• Reduce costs for aviation, ammunition, uniforms, supplies, education and travel to save about $1.4 million.

• Reduce overtime for patrol officers, administrative staff and other employees to save $1.4 million.

• Reduce extradition and travel to save $500,000.

• Eliminate vacant positions to save $3 million; this cut would not affect detention officers.

• Change the jails’ food-distribution system to save $926,000.

Hendershott said budget officials would trim the general fund by increasing the number of furlough days to 15 for all staff to save $3.6 million, cutting four sworn but vacant captain positions to save $626,000 and reducing repairs and maintenance by $500,000 for technology programs.  On the detention side, Hendershott said budget officials would increase the number of furlough days to 13 to save $6.2 million.

There is more background and detail in the full article at AZCentral.com.

Officials say only three workers will be laid off … Twenty-three people will be reassigned to new jobs, some of those will take pay cuts averaging 22 percent and ranging as high as 37 percent. In extreme cases, workers will drop as many as two grades in rank – from captain to sergeant, for example …

And for the prison system, work-force cuts is just one of many reductions stemming from the recent legislative session.  En route to lopping $20 million from its 2010 budget, Corrections scaled back a program aimed at reforming drug addicts, closed a center that helped judges decide the best sentence for various violators and eliminated a parole office and a transition center …

But when it came to workers, Corrections head Tom Patterson wrote in an April 9 letter to his staff that the agency’s main priority was “to preserve employment for as many staff members as possible.”   “In every possible case, we tried to offer affected staff members a reassignment to alternative positions,” said Patterson, who acknowledged that many of those positions paid much less and forced workers to commute farther. Patterson noted that many of the looming cuts were absorbed by leaving open positions vacant, and by 21 workers who accepted retirement incentives.

The Bibb County GA Sheriff’s Office is hoping to hire 17 civilian jailers to allow trained deputies working in the jail to fill other vacancies within the department.  Sheriff Jerry Modena said the change will save money and fill vacancies faster.  Report from Macon.com.

Chief Deputy David Davis said with the hiring of civilian corrections officers, trained deputies currently in the jail will fill vacancies in the patrol, criminal investigations and warrants divisions.   “It’s an absolute better use (of deputies),” Modena said.

The new salary for a corrections officer is $23,130 — more than $2,000 less than the salary for an entry level deputy, according to a job posting listed on Bibb County’s Web site, www.co.bibb.ga.us. While deputies must undergo 10 weeks of training, corrections officers are only required to attend a two-week basic corrections class, Modena said …Because civilian corrections officers wouldn’t be required to go before the civil service board, their hiring process will be much faster, he said, adding it could be as little as two to three months.

Bill Lemacks, director of jail services for the Georgia Sheriff’s Association, said about three-quarters of the sheriff’s offices in Georgia hire civilian jailers who don’t necessarily go on to become deputies.

Becky Williams, president of Service Employees International Union District 1199, has been involved in ongoing discussions with ODRC Director Terry Collins and other members of the ODRC team to find alternative solutions.   Williams applauded the decision by Collins to allocate federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act approved by Congress earlier this year to supplant the funding gap and allow workers to remain on the job.

Quinn plans to not fully open the prison in Thomson, cut out funding for the anti-gun violence program Operation Ceasefire and close both the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center and Pere Marquette Youth Center, a youth prison for girls in southern Illinois …

Quinn also wants to make security staff work 12-hour shifts for three or four days a week, on an alternating schedule. Those employees now work five, eight-hour workdays each week.  The agency projects it will spend $61 million in overtime costs in the current budget year. Switching to the new schedule, it estimates, would cut that overtime cost to $13.1 million next year.  Corrections spokespeople say the savings will help the agency hire 183 additional workers to ease staffing issues and give workers who already are working 12-hour and 16-hour shifts more flexible work schedules …

Anders Lindall, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, calls the 12-hour shift an “accounting trick” that merely “redefines what is currently considered overtime as straight time” … Terry Baker, a correctional officer and union local president at the Taylorville prison, said the additional hires fall far short of helping with serious overtime problems, and asking guards to work longer hours isn’t a solution.   “You’re just asking for problems,” Baker said. “You’re always going to have some kind of overtime. It may not be as much, but you’re still going to have some. There’s no thought given to what you do in that situation. Do you work a person 24 hours straight?” …

The governor says he’s open to resolving the union’s concerns.  “I think we’re going to come up with a good solution,” Quinn said Wednesday at an appearance in Springfield. “Life is sometimes a dialogue and negotiation and that’s the way it should be. The employer, the union that represents the employees, I’m sure can come to a good conclusion. I’m optimistic about that.”

“We are waiting and watching,” said Brian Olsen, executive director of a prison officers’ union, which rallied 400 correctional at the State Capitol today seeking a 20-percent pay increase — a jump that would move Texas from 48th in the nation in correctional pay to midway.  “We are not giving up … We remember Daniel Nagle’s words” …

Texas’ prison system has been chronically short of guards for more than a decade, so short that officials were forced to close parts of some prisons because they did not have enough staff to safely operate them. The agency is about 2,300 officers short now, down from nearly 4,000 in September 2007. “If they can find money for everything else, they can find money for us,” said Don McCoy, a 28-year veteran at the 1,100-convict Powledge Unit near Palestine in northeast Texas. “We’ll be back, again and again, until they approve it.”

Inside the domed statehouse, as budget writers continued work, the 20-percent pay hike proposed by prison officials last summer continued to shrink.  Last week, a House work group tentatively approved a 5-percent increase and put the rest on a long “wish list” of state needs. A Senate work group recommended the entire $450 million hike, but by today there were reports that only a 10-percent increase might survive …

In their proposed budget, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials sought 20-percent raises for correctional officers and parole officers, at a cost of $453.4 million.   That would bring the starting salaries of a correctional officer from $26,016 to $30,179, and the maximum salaries from $34,624 to $42,242.  Parole officers would see a starting-salary increase from $32,277 to $37,441, with the maximum salary increasing from $36,363 to $43,636.

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