About the Rockwall County Jail
Rockwall County Jail in Rockwall, Texas is a 444-bed County Jail with an average daily population of around 240 inmates, consisting of both males and females being held for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to first degree felony crimes. Misdemeanors may be either pre-trial or post sentenced and serving out their misdemeanor sentence. Felonies may be either pre-trial or post-trial awaiting transfer to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) prison.
The Challenge
Compliance ranks high on the list of priorities for jail administrators. However, it was not the main concern that kept Captain Alexander Gray up at night. It’s the ongoing safety of personnel, contractors, volunteers, and inmates that has taken top priority.
For Rockwall County Jail, outdated systems made safety and compliance inefficient, from accessing information through physical reports and unnecessary radio traffic, to outdated software. This included their use of Guard1 and the “Pipe” from TimeKeeping Systems, Inc., which they first deployed around 2009 and had been in use for the past 13 years. Guard1’s data collection and reporting increasingly failed to meet the needs of a modern corrections team.
“We recognized that the ‘Pipe’ system had become antiquated and there was not a lot of effort being put into improving or adding useful features. We decided to explore other options to see what was available. And what we discovered is that the functionality of Command Cloud is geared exactly towards the needs of corrections professionals.”
Initially, there was some reluctance to removing paper logging and the Pipe. Line staff are normally somewhat reluctant with any change. They were accustomed to using a combination of the Pipe and paper documentation to capture data. However, relying on these methods and being able to retrieve it during an annual inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards was extremely time consuming and difficult. It would take a team of staff several days to gather the required documentation that was requested by Jail Standards leading up to the inspection and during the inspection process.
With Rockwall County Jail’s combination of manual methods and outdated technologies, it was virtually impossible to be proactive in recognizing performance issues or patterns. Most of the time, command staff more commonly reacted to “something bad happening,” digging for the information needed to figure out what was going on. As Captain Gray explains, “Even then, you would have to really dig and dedicate a lot of time to pick up any patterns with staff (regarding late checks and compliance rates).”
How Command Cloud Helps
Command Cloud, the officer experience platform (OXP), helps correctional officers modernize, optimize, and drive better correctional outcomes. Command Cloud is a platform of integrated applications, delivering real-time situational awareness to create a common operating picture.
Rockwall County Jail line staff work 12-hour shifts from 07:00-19:00 then 19:00-07:00. There are typically two Sergeants and 12 Deputies/Officers per shift for admissions/release and housing areas.
Housing consists of both linear and a direct supervision dorm, along with some separation and isolation halls, a medical unit, and a special management unit. Additional support staff are assigned to the kitchen, transport, medical and programs.
Staff became more confident and within the first 90 days of use, rounds compliance rates were above 99%. Rockwall County Jail has maintained this consistently high compliance during each quarter with 14-day compliance rates captured during each quarter (now in their fifth quarter using GUARDIAN RFID).
- 2024 Q1 99.88%
- 2024 Q2 99.76%
- 2024 Q3 99.97%
- 2024 Q4 99.99%
- 2025 Q1 99.93%
Using Mission Command and Mobile Command XR, Rockwall County Jail deputies have taken significant steps to ensure personnel have immediate access to critical information regarding safety and security. For instance, Command Cloud provides details about which inmates are associated with security threat groups, tracks dangerous items like razors that may be issued to inmates, and prevents inmates who cannot be in proximity to each other from sharing spaces. These features are just a few examples of the information available to our personnel, but they play a crucial role in maintaining the safety and security of everyone involved.
Captain Gray explained that the ease of pulling our reports and the added benefit of our data analytics platform, Operational Intelligence, gives him and other supervisors immediate information that can help them in making adjustments to increase compliance rates, improve staff productivity, and save valuable man-hours preparing for their annual Jail Inspection.
Command Cloud also helps document any late rounds that are captured. Late rounds require an officer justification, and a supervisor (sergeant) justification. If a sergeant questions the officer’s reasoning, a lieutenant is required to review the late round and investigate as needed. This is the new standard operating procedure, and it holds staff accountable when needed, while providing the required documentation for their annual inspection. With Command Cloud, one person gather all the required documentation in a matter of a few hours, which used to take a team several days to complete.
Reporting capabilities for inmate recreation has also been a huge benefit. Command Cloud recreation reports provide information on who has had recreation time, how much time at recreation, and makes tracking this on a weekly basis much less time consuming. Rockwall County Jail is now 100% compliant on a weekly basis in accordance with Texas Jail Standards requirement, according to Captain Gray.
Staff Trends
With Operational Intelligence (OI), the business intelligence layer of Command Cloud, Captain Gray and supervisory staff are now fully proactive in monitoring compliance daily. “Being able to quickly pull a report in OI, or even schedule that report to go to your email weekly allows you to quickly identify patterns in officer non-compliance, late checks, daily shift compliance patterns, and other areas. These reports can be filtered in so many ways and so quickly that you can readily retrieve a report you are needing,” said Captain Gray.
Operational Intelligence ensures that Rockwall County Jail supervisors receive inmate information uniformly, allowing them to address critical areas within the detention center, such as following up on inmates who have not eaten in 24 hours. This process includes a holistic assessment of these inmates by involving our medical and behavioral health units, ensuring we remain 100% compliant in providing inmates with their required care.
“If you hold an executive-level position within your agency and cannot immediately confirm whether you are compliant with essential constitutional standards like recreation, you are falling behind in adopting technology consistent with 21st century correction principles.”
With Rockwall County Jail line staff knowing compliance rates across each team and shift, a friendly competition has been created among the shifts to have the best compliance. This has largely just been informal competition, but first line supervisors have created their own certificates and recognize high compliance and high performers with these certificates. “Line staff now appreciate what capabilities we offer, because the more functions they have been able to incorporate with Command Cloud, the less reports and paper staff has and can now focus more time on what is in front of them.”
GUARDIAN RFID is a member of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) and the AWS Public Sector Partner (PSP) Program.
Command Cloud is built from the ground up on a modern technology stack to protect and empower America’s Thin Gray Line. Command Cloud is deployed securely in the Cloud in partnership with AWS, the most trusted and broadly adopted Cloud platform, using a number of AWS cloud services, including AWS GovCloud (US), Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS Lambda.
Together, these services enable Command Cloud to meet the growing technology needs of Warriors while maintaining a strong security posture that maintains the integrity of Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) Security Policy compliance.
