Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2022, $54,905)
Anamosa State Penitentiary (ASP) is a historic institution with roots back to 1879 that houses approximately 1000 incarcerated individuals that are a mix of maximum and medium security custody designation. The antiquated, linear supervision model of the living units pose obstacles to staff and incarcerated individual safety.
The first of which is line of sight. The living units are rectangular and the cells are back to back in the center, only allowing for visibility on one side of the unit at any given time. Additionally, there can be two to four levels, or tiers, of cells. Necessitating the Correctional Officer climb several flights of stairs to provide limited supervision at various intervals.
The age of the structure does not reflect modern design concepts such as individual showers nor does it eliminate the numerous blind spots in each unit. Without staff supervision, this allows incarcerated individuals to perpetrate or be subject to physical, sexual abuse and harassment.
Staffing cannot adequately overcome physical plant deficiencies placing both staff and incarcerated individuals in harm’s way. Monitoring equipment such as cameras and larger network video monitors for visibility is one way of increasing safety and operational integrity.
The current ASP video monitoring system consists of 98 cameras that can monitor activity. This is not sufficient to deter, prevent and detect sexual abuse/harassment.
The additional cameras, will double the amount currently installed, and are necessary to ensure greater visibility in all five living units, common areas as well as incarcerated individual work areas.
ASP is a historic facility and that comes with physical plant limitation that are difficult to overcome without increases in technology resources. Therefore, the scope of the project will be to purchase an additional 49 cameras to be installed in the Anamosa State Penitentiary living units in locations identified by Security staff and the PREA Compliance Manager to increase sexual safety.