A partnership between NEC Australia and HPE-owned Aruba will see a host of ICT solutions and managed services rolled out across Australia’s newest and largest prison, Clarence Correctional Centre, promising improved on-site surveillance capabilities and digital services for selected inmates.

The new technologies comprise a full surveillance and network outfitting; telephony, voice, and video gateways; end-point devices; operator services; and Inmate Digital Services (IDS), allowing Serco, the facility’s operator, to deploy third-party applications, programs, and digital content.

“We are proud to develop and implement the most advanced digital services platform for Clarence Correctional Centre, keeping security guards, staff and inmates safe,” said Milan Djuricic, NEC Australia’s VP for managed services.

Tapping into Aruba Central’s cloud networking, AI, and IoT capabilities, NEC Australia’s digital platform will not only monitor security, but also manage on-site WLAN, SD-WAN, and LAN services.

Meanwhile, as part of the rollout, inmates “who practice acceptable social behaviours” will be granted secure access to a range of digital services, such as e-messaging family members, job applications, sports activity signups, and cashless banking – initiatives hoped to better prepare inmates for release into the community.

Inmates can now access these digital services via in-cell personalised tablets or shared kiosks, set up as part of UK specialist offender vendor Core Systems’ ‘Pathway’ offering, introduced to the facility in August last year.

Clarence Correctional Centre opened in June 2020 in the northern NSW regional centre of Grafton and houses up to 1,700 inmates.

The Centre is run as a public-private partnership involving the NSW Government, construction groups John Laing and John Holland, Macquarie Capital, and Serco – the facility’s primary operator.