It’s coming up on a year since the IDOC denied my public records request for all legal agreements, statements of work and internal PowerPoint presentations surrounding its contract to equip Idaho prisoners with wearable monitoring technologies. I submitted the request after Idaho State Correctional Institution administrators prepared myself and other residents to dawn wearable tracking devices by November 2024.
I forget the exact month that a crew of civilian workers showed up at our facility. I do, however, remember them installing what look like cheap satellite-shaped receivers and solar-panel power stations, some with wires connecting to nothing, all throughout our prison campus and along the perimeter fence. I also remember a corrections officer telling me to move along when I stopped to ask the name of their company.
It wasn’t long after that when the rumors began. Prison workers were purportedly using their cell phones to scan the sticker barcodes on some of the other equipment installed around the facility. Little plastic white boxes with short black antennas kept coming back as car parts. Other metallic boxes of unknown purpose mounted to walls were registering as paper towels and toilet paper.
When all visible progress of the installation had been halted for months, prison administrators told residents during a Town Hall meeting that the company, headquartered in Florida, was taking time away from Idaho to deal with damage caused by hurricanes.
More months passed without any progress, and in February I submitted another public records request to the IDOC:
“Hello. Back in July, I was denied my public records request for the agreement between the IDOC and the company contracted to equip residents of the Idaho State Correctional Institution with wearable monitoring devices. This request (R021592-072924) was denied on the grounds that it contained security procedures and site security records, which are exempt per Idaho Code. How about just providing me the name of the company contracted and the total cost to install and operate these services by year?”
The department again refused to provide any information.
Now approaching May, one corrections officer tells me that the implementation has been delayed while the IDOC and its contractor work out kinks between their operating systems. “I’m told that we’ve got people here talking to people overseas,” he says, “and nobody can figure out what the hell the problem is.”
Other prison staff, however, are quietly spreading the rumor that the IDOC was scammed for $1.8M by a company based in Nigeria. And not only was the department scammed, goes the chatter, but the company’s installation team waited until the weekend to pack up everything–including two golf carts belonging to the prison–before riding off into the sunset.
Do you or someone you know have the juice to get to the truth? The IDOC transparency team can be contacted with questions regarding contracts, proposals and other department records at 208-658-2000.