Since the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority took over day-to-day operations at the county jail five years ago, the facility has seen a steady stream of detainee deaths from a variety of causes, but jail officials are hoping the tide can be turned by deploying radar technology in the coming months and years.
The troubled jail has become a testing ground for Integrity Communications Solutions‘ biometric life detection system, or BLDS. The system uses 60 GHz short-range radar to detect detainees’ breathing and heart rates in their cells.
Jail chief of infrastructure and technology Greg Couch said the BLDS unit does not require detainees to wear a physical device and requires little to no maintenance.
“It’s a non-invasive, radar-based motion detector that detects breathing and heart rate without using a wearable,” Couch said. “If it’s functioning properly, it’ll cycle through 50,000 measurements per second, and then it runs an algorithm on that and analyzes the radar beams that come back to it. It declutters the noise and separates small movements of your pulse versus the large movements of your chest. It does all those calculations and will show the heart and respiration rate on the radar.”
Integrity Communications Solutions is a Colorado Springs-based contractor with a focus on outer space. The company discovered the radar’s usefulness in a jail setting by accident. British-born Graeme Towndrow, Integrity’s president of commercial operations, spent much of his career in the U.K. working for New Scotland Yard and for the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, which is similar to the FBI. He has also worked in the British intelligence community.
“The company makes gadgets for a whole range of things used in orbit,” Towndrow said. “And one of those things this radar was used for was communications in space. And as they were talking through that solution in the office, they were talking about how the radar looks for oxygen and water and how it doesn’t particularly like oxygen and water, which is why it works so well in space. But in a closed environment, they were talking about how it honed in on vibrations. It would give you an accurate heart and breathing rate and movement for someone in a given area if they were near the radar.”
Towndrow decided to test the device in his office.
“Sure enough, it tracked me around the office and told me how fast I was breathing and what my heart rate was doing,” Towndrow said. “Given my past work in prisons and jails in the UK, my immediate thought was this would be a good use case.”
Towndrow found out about the Oklahoma County Jail’s persistent problem with inmate suicides and overdoses through a Google search. The fact that the company’s owners are Oklahoma natives helped Towndrow convince them the jail might be a good place to start.
“It took a bit of convincing because they’re invested in space,” Towndrow said.
Towndrow reached out to former jail CEO Brandi Garner, who invited him to check out the facility and make his pitch. According to Couch, the jail is now installing the units in cells where the most high-risk detainees are held.
“It’s a $49,500 contract for 43 cells on the 13th floor, which is our highest risk population because of mental and medical health needs,” Couch said. “We have six installed so far, and they just shipped 37 more. Our tentative schedule is to get the whole 13th floor done by the third or fourth week of August, so it is coming together pretty quickly.”
Jail deaths continue to occur
The Oklahoma County Jail could use all the help it can get when it comes to reducing fatalities. Since the jail trust took over in July 2020, there have been 59 detainee deaths. That total includes the death of Everett Edwards on July 3. Edwards was found unresponsive in his cell during a sight check. Edwards became the eighth detainee to die this year and the second in as many months. Mario Latrael Mason hanged himself inside the jail in May.
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The facility has also failed its last 11 unannounced inspections conducted by the State Department of Health. Those inspections also included dozens of missed sight checks by jail employees, who are required to conduct checks each hour by state law. Jail officials have said staffing issues are one reason why sight checks are missed.
While the BLDS system cannot replace sight checks, Couch hopes it will become a valuable way to help prevent deaths.
“It’s another tool that augments our existing tools to deal with sight checks,” Couch said. “It’s a force multiplier. We have a finite number of sight checkers. But again, the important point to make is this will never replace a human being checking on another human being, but it helps us be proactive rather than reactive.”
Towndrow said one of the benefits of the system is that it works continuously.
“I can’t speak with as much confidence about the law in the U.S., but I think it’s very similar to the U.K. in that it’s enshrined that there is a duty of care to individuals who are in custody, and it’s also the law that those sight checks need to take place,” he said. “So they will continue to happen, and they should continue to happen. The reality is that sight checks do get missed. I think where this helps is with situations with high-risk individuals that are on 15-minute checks. Even if those sight checks happen, what’s happening in the 14 minutes and 59 seconds in between? This radar never takes a day off, and it never needs to go to the bathroom. It doesn’t get hungry. It’s a tool that augments an already existing tool in the sight checks.”
Timmons on jail radar: ‘I’m intrigued by it’
Interim jail CEO Paul Timmons said the BLDS system could give jail staff an early warning of potential problems, which makes it a valuable tool in his eyes.
“I’m intrigued by it,” Timmons said. “I think it will be very beneficial in areas where we need to be propped up, as far as making sure we are able to address concerns of the inmates here with regard to sight checks and making sure they are being looked after. We’re stuck with the design of this facility until the new jail is built. We have limitations with visuals because of the design of the facility. We can’t be everywhere all at one time, but I think this will help us be more aware when people are intent on doing something like causing self-harm or whatever it is. Hopefully, it will give us an early warning so that we can intervene and prevent loss of life.”
Towndrow said one of the benefits of the system is that it doesn’t require detainees to be disturbed.
“One of the issues that I think impacts mental health inside jail facilities is sleep deprivation,” Towndrow said. “When you go into a jail, you are constantly being observed, and there is an officer who has a duty to ensure that they are alive and well. The cells can be dark at night, and people are under blankets. They are very still. It’s almost impossible to do a sight check and make sure people are breathing without waking them up. The radar can see in the dark and through a blanket. So they’re not having to consistently wake people up at night, which allows people to get more sleep, and I think that’s going to be better for those people who are in jail to get sleep. It’s no different than anyone else.”
The radar units are inside specially designed casing that is highly resistant to tampering. Detainees have time to think of — and in the past have found — creative ways to tamper with some parts of their cells. Early in the jail’s history, detainees were able to dislodge glass blocks intended to let light in. One even managed to escape that way.
“This goes up in the corner of the cell in an enclosure that’s completely smooth,” Couch said. “You can’t tie something to it, and you can’t get into it because it’s secure. The screws are counter sunk. Even as resourceful as some can be, it would be very difficult to tamper with it.”
The system is still undergoing adjustment. Towndrow was in OKC in early July for one of the final rounds of tweaking before the system becomes fully operational in August.
“All walls, not just jail walls, are off a little bit,” he said. “They’re never perfectly straight. So like the slightest degree in a wall will make a difference in how our radar performs, so we need to understand exactly where the radars need to be in terms of height and location in the cell and angle of view. We also need to understand how big the cell is, what the shape of the cell is, and how many people are meant to be in the cell. Once we feed that data into the system, the radar can do its job.”
Couch said the system will be constantly monitored by jail staff who will be alerted if there is a problem. That could include elevated or lowered heart rates, breathing problems, and even if two detainees are fighting each other. The people inside the cell appear as green or red boxes depending on the data the BLDS system records. Those whose vitals are normal appear in green, while those who are experiencing abnormal heart rates or breathing problems appear in red.
“It will be integrated into our internal network, and the parameters are set by a doctor,” Couch said. “So if we have a situation where someone goes over that prescribed range where their heart rate is going 125 [beats] a minute, they might be having a heart attack, or it might be two people fighting, or it might be caused by someone trying to hurt themselves, and we can respond to that.”
He said none of the data will be retained permanently, owing to privacy concerns.
“There is no personally identifiable information attached to any of the data,” Couch said. “It wouldn’t follow a detainee out of the facility. Once they leave the room, the information doesn’t exist anymore.”
Timmons said he believes the system could be a game changer for the beleaguered facility.
“I think it will save lives,” he said. “It’ll give us early detection of a problem, so hopefully in that situation we can intervene.”
