29 October
The Department of Corrections won the Computerworld Excellence in the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Government Award at a special function at Te Papa last night.
“We are very pleased that our project to jointly manage the unathorised use of mobile phones in prisons has been recognised by our peers in the IT industry,” says Derek Lyons, Assistant General Manager for Systems and Infrastructure and part of the project team.
“The Department’s top priority is public safety and implementing cellphone blocking in the 20 prisons nationwide is part of delivering on this priority.
“Winning this award recognises we are achieving this as every entry was evaluated on the extent to which they made a difference and benefited the public.
“Criminal activity conducted from within prisons has been reduced with the roll out of this project. The system forces prisoners to use the prisoner pay phone which is monitored, helping us reduce crime; this in turn has led to improved public safety.”
While cellphone blocking is not an entirely new initiative, with one or two countries around the world using it, there are no other instances worldwide of the same degree of precision or overall coverage of the prison estate.
“Many prisons in New Zealand are sited in large cities and towns with very close neighbours. This makes it a technically challenging as well as pioneering project.
“We have had to be very innovative in ensuring cellphone usage in prisons was stopped without also impacting on the use of cellphones by a prison’s neighbours. This award acknowledges this innovation, and that the project team has had to pioneer completely new solutions."
This also could not have been achieved without the help of Telecom and Vodafone, who have worked closely with the Department on this.
“Due to the ground-breaking work they were undertaking the Telco’s and the Department’s engineers also had to work closely together, learning as they went how to effectively block just the cellphones within the prison boundary.”
While winning this award is a recognition of the excellent work done to date, there will be a continual focus on refining and improving cellphone jamming in prisons.
For further information contact the Communications Services Desk: