01/11/13 Prisoners in the Marshall County Jail will soon see an additional charge to use the telephone. This week Marshall County Sheriff Tom Chamberlin asked the County Commissioners to approve an additional fee of 25 cents per phone call to cover the cost of a new voice verification technology that is being added to the phone system.
The new software requires inmates to put in their personalized pin number and say a specific sentence that will allow the technology to verify the caller making the phone call.
Commissioner Jack Roose question the need and it was explained that an overbearing inmates who might be running low on funds could force another inmate who has funds to use their pin and access sentence to make a phone call. This new technology will be able to recognize the change in voice and disconnect the call.
In other business the Commissioner tabled the 2013 contract from Great Lakes Laboratory. County Attorney Jim Clevenger said the terms of the contract have changed and the price has increased. The 2012 contract was for $42,240 with unlimited tests. This year’s contract is nearly doubled at $84,000 with limitation on the number of submissions. The contract is shared between the Sheriff’s Department and the Prosecutors Office. Neither office budgeted for this excessive increase.
The commissioners suggested checking to see if there is another company that can provide laboratory testing services for the County.
