It’s a $38 billion a year business. It’s a residential community of 2.3 million men, women and children, with a population gain of more than 500 percent over the past thirty years. There are bedrooms, dayrooms, exercise rooms, hospital facilities and even gardens.

But the culture here is vastly different as compared to a Ritz Carlton or Mayo Clinic.

In most every typical security integration project, “you want to keep people outside the facility; here you want to keep them in,” says Bob Ellis, president of Engineered Control Systems, Spokane, Wash., and who was mentored into the sector years ago. His firm, among about a dozen or so in the U.S., specializes, although not necessarily exclusively, in corrections — local jails, state and federal prisons, both public and private.

Obviously, there is money to be made serving this niche as well as its umbrella criminal justice industry with $110 billion annually in spending. But reseller beware.

More than a few integrators have failed and disappeared, according to Ellis. “You have to know what you are doing,” he says. “These are much different projects” than typical security integration. You have to know what to expect; how to price right; understand the particular needs of corrections; have patience in the sometimes long decision making of the buyer, main contractor or architect; and also be experienced in specialized technologies that can range from “fatal fences” to inmate visitation systems, among the many big and little details.

Donald Rochon, president of EO Integrated Systems, Washington, Mich., agrees. “You can lose your butt. You just don’t want to wade in. Each facility or agency “has its own way of doing things,” Rochon adds. His firm has about 80 percent of its total business in some type of corrections work. One suggestion for newbies: Start with a small job or two and then work up the complexity ladder.

So it is crucial “to know how prisons and government work,” points out Bruce Brown, project manager for MCM Integrated Systems, Van Nuys, Calif. For example, “you have to go through background checks” for all staff assigned to the project, he says. Whether it is a prison or a courthouse, the essentials are security video, access control, intercom, often personal emergency response systems, and sometimes nurse call, although the latter gear is not as feature rich as hospital versions.

A decade or more ago, there was a lot of new prison construction. There still is some but today there is significant business for security system integrators in retrofit. “It’s about 80 percent of my business,” comments Brown. “As with many businesses in this economy, there is consolidation in jails and prisons to cut cost. There is closing and combining of some facilities,” says Rochon.

In many ways, “it is a local market,” he adds. And that impacts the labor side of projects, which can prove tricky. “Hours of work can change” suddenly. “There can be work at night,” says Brown. And, with government work, pay is pegged at local prevailing rates. A previous issue of Today’s System Integrator explored this issue and the influence of the Davis-Bacon Act.

In addition, “workers must be escorted. Just to run out to the truck for tie wraps could be a half hour or more trip going through numerous locked doors,” says Rochon.

Most everything installed must be ruggedized. “You have to use detention grade gear. Hide wiring in conduit. And you have to caulk everything so as to visually indicate tampering,” adds Ellis. In this niche, buyers also tend to see their equipment as lasting 15 to 20 years,” observes Brown, with a timespan very much longer than corporate and commercial use of technology. Ellis sees analog over megapixel cameras in many projects, with a longer period of migration from one to the other. One notable change: There is a need for longer storage of video, according to local, state and federal mandates.

According to Ellis, unique demands in the niche demand a higher level of security technology.

In the control room, for example, there are touchscreens and high speed industrial-grade programmable logic controllers or PLCs. With thousands of daily transactions of inmates, guards and other officials moving through many secured doors, “equipment must reaction accurately within, say, 250 milliseconds for access control,” explains Ellis. So, for instance, “we have to write our own drivers. It is programming intensive.” His firm has its own research and development operation, and tests systems in-house with the buyer before installation.

Ellis contends that “about 90 percent of typical security products are not suited” for the corrections field. “And you have to design more ergonomics” into control gear. “There are no keyboards in control rooms.” An officer may handle about 1,000 transactions an hour. “And we rarely use video analytics,” adds Ellis, who does, however, use biometrics in certain situations. For example, retinal scanning is in use in some facilities to securely identify inmates as they move from cells to court appearances and back.

As with other integration projects, there are “trophy” prison jobs.

Tom Sansone Sr, president of T&R Alarm Systems, Clifton, N.J., has done many corrections jobs over the years. But he really enjoys talking about working on a venture at the infamous Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. One big challenge, says Sansone, is the age of the facility. It first opened in 1826, the third prison built by New York State. The first prison was built in 1797 in Greenwich Village and a second one in 1816 called Auburn State Prison. “Jail cells at Sing Sing and the complexity of working within the population is much more intense than installing a security system in a new facility,” observes Sansone.

Another unique T&R project is the 7,000-square-foot Bergen Regional Medical Center Forensics D-1 unit, which was renovated in 2008. Part of the medical center’s facilities, it is maintained by the Bergen County Sheriff's Department. Designed for maximum security and abuse resistance, the facility is reinforced by concrete block walls and heavy-duty metal ceilings.

A member of the PSA Security Network of Denver, Colo., T&R Alarm Systems worked with the co-op to aid in obtaining the best solutions for the job. The integrator picked Vicon Industries of Hauppauge, N.Y.; TOA Electronics of Burlingame, Calif.; ComTech Communications of Sacramento, Calif.; and Magal-Senstar Inc. (MSi) of Herndon, Va., for the project.

Still, overall Sansone says that the risky part in many projects is labor. “You can get really hurt. There is always downtime in a corrections facility, lockdowns and other causes. You must account for all tools coming in and going out. It very much is a matter of project micro-management.” He suggests integrators go “1.5 on labor.”

As compared to the past, there are now private-owned and operated corrections facilities. “And I believe that the private sector is even more budget minded,” says Sansone.

Numerous integrators who have made a solid business in corrections consistently advise that it takes both deep experience working the niche as well as expertise with myriad typical and unique technologies.

And when it comes to retrofit projects especially, it also takes a solid understanding of very old legacy equipment, new technology and networking, according to Dale Kougel, engineering manager at Stanley Convergent Security Solutions (SCSS), Indianapolis, Ind. No doubt, SCSS has an impressive track record in corrections. “In the 20 or so years in the field, we have handled thousands of projects and hundreds of facilities,” says Ed Pedersen, vice president of engineered solutions. “We have been doing physical security information management, for example, for 15 years and before there was today’s recognition of PSIM” more widely, adds Pedersen.

There are challenges shared by many integrators and facilities. When it comes to older facilities and retrofit projects, often it is about budget constraints, according to Dusty Hackleman, senior corrections sales engineer. “We build everything in our shop, test it all and bring in the client to view it all” before switching to installation, says Hackleman. He adds that it is important to work with nonproprietary equipment and provide a high degree of maintenance and service. This includes industrial grade PLCs and I/Os all connected and a command center with state-of-art touchscreens, adds Kougel. “You just have to move people correctly, quickly and easily throughout a facility,” he says.

In addition to security video, access controls, intercoms and utility controls, SCSS also integrates video visitation, duress systems and a variety of fence/perimeter alerting systems. It also has wireless touchscreens as add-on modules. There is growing interest in biometrics as a way to more securely handle intake and release, adds Kougel. EyeSwipeNano, for example, is a miniaturized iris recognition system providing real-time iris capture, at-a-distance and in motion. And there are the firm’s eServices, for online, real-time eManagement tools and services, points out Pedersen.

Concerning video visitation, what SCSS calls its Visimate solution, there is centralized control and management as well as scheduling. Depending on implementation, some correctional facilities also see it as a revenue sources for the facility, observes Pederson.