In my day to day working environment as a prison escort officer I am always stumbling across hidden treasure........ well, treasure of sorts. We the officers and guards need to always be lucky, the prisoner needs only to be lucky once!
I will take you by the hand and walk you through the following:
1. Examples of what is smuggled in to custody
2. How the treasure is smuggle in to custody
3. How we are attempting to counter the smuggling
4. What could we do better to counter the smuggling
Talking of treasure, and before we embark on the seedy world of contraband, let me introduce you to a hidden gem of the world of presentation tools that is Google slide presentation.
Today in my blog I will not only be imparting my knowledge of contraband in the prison service and custody but also doing so with the power of Google Slide Presentation and asking whether the subject matter was better delivered as a result of this new free online technology? Is Google better than power point? Lets see shall we....... Buckle in, you're in for a bumpy ride!
The Prison Service - A Little Background
The government has long accepted that its service is in turmoil! Justice secretary Liz Truss recently announced that £1.3bn investment is required in UK prisons. But how do you convince the private sector ( The G4S and GeoAmey companies for example) to plough back monies into a service that will depleat their profit margin?
What we see instead, in an age of delivering more for less, the slashing of prison budgets whilst warehousing even greater numbers of inmates in prisons that are overseen by fewer and less staff. This is no way to transform rehabilitation. Add to that the slashing of salaries resulting in experienced guards tendering their resignations opening the doors for young more inexperienced staff to take up the slack. This does not bode well.......
Why take the Risk?
Prison contraband is big business. The prison drug market is estimated at 60 million. An ounce of marijuana worth £150 on the outside will rocket to £2 800 inside. A £10 mobile phone will be worth £250 on the inside, whilst an iPhone can be worth in excess of £1000. It's a lucrative business!!!!
Who Takes the Risk?
There is a whole cast of players and this I will cover in greater detail in the below presentation but something you may find surprising is that its not only the convicted that have a part to play ...
One modus operendi is the use of "A neworker", someone on the outside that inmates can contact. A networker will meet with dealers on the inmates behalf. The networker will then pass drugs (or contraband) to a mule who will then pass it on to the inmate. Surprisingly, prison officers are acting as "mules". Just searching the internet for "prison officer and illegal smuggling" brings up a host of convicted officers - the centre for social justice says that this is due to blackmail! Sadly its usually to make money, a way to bolster a lowly salary.
Historic Examples of Foiled Attempts
1. An attempt at Dublin's Mountjoy prison with high grade heroin concealed in a baby's nappy was thwarted by a sniffer dog.
2. One woman risked life and limb to smuggle a grenade into a Colombian prison. Hiding the explosive in her vagina she made it in as guards are unable to inspect visitors genitalia. The grenade later exploded killing 3 people and injuring others.
This is madness, a hidden world that I a prisoner escort officer am part to daily! With the aid of Google presentation below I will share with you the ingenuity and methods that I stumble upon daily. I will attempt to share the difficulties I encounter and how I suggest we can improve and go forward from here.
There you have it, a brief insight into life behind bars and my role within it. Sadly much needs to be done to improve the status quo but without funding its nothing more than a pipe dream! Excuse the pun! Take a brief look at this video to see what we are truly up against on a daily basis.
So what of this Google presentation as a means of getting my point across. Lets review it:
According to Jonathan Blum in Entrepeneur on line magazine, "Google docs has improved its collaboration features and has added more editing tools. Unlike Microsoft - google never stops tinkering with its google apps"
I ask is this really a good thing? Always tinkering always changing? My supermarket always does this, always moving stuff around, sometimes I just want to pop into store pick up my jar of pickle and exit stage left...... but the aisles and contents are always moving changing - this is frustrating stuff. Surely the same applies to software. If someone is up against the clock and needs to put a presentation together quickly they don't want to be stumbling around the new interface... wondering how to? and which button now does what?
Granted, Google docs is great for collaborative work and perfect for editing documents, multiple users can now be in the same presentation simultaneously and watch changes made as they happen. Built in chat supports user communication and a revision history function shows the user what changes have been made and lets users revert to an earlier version. Positive stuff but does it rival others?
We must sing the praises of the built in chat and real time editing feature enabling groups distanced by geographic locations to work together collaboratively. The auto save feature - even if youre presentation is inadvertently deleted it will be saved automatically. Google Presentation opens popular file formats and supports common presentation making formats.
Well thats the good....... what about the not so good???
The draw of paying more for better. Granted, the basic google presentation service remains free however akin to the majority of online service products, google encourage the use of "Google apps for business" which will set the user back circa £50 per user, per annum. Not great for small business making every penny count.
Here's the big draw back.....Internet access is a must! Consider having to present to a small community in the sticks without broadband or 3G....... what then? Revert to Microsoft me thinks!
Annoyingly due to regular upgrades, the user is unable to automatically upgrade historic presentations. Currently users must manually import and copy and paste old slides into the new editor - time consuming and annoying to have to re do old work.
Spell check is not automatic and neither is there a way to automatically number pages - boring but an important point!
Bottome Line
For small businesses starting out, or teams distanced from each other geographically who need to work together to deliver a presentation or product - Google presentation is a solid platform. The basic software is free whereas power point is not. Does it rival the competition? For the sole presenter I would have to say no, I prefer my free wps presentation software, however for online collaborative work this is the future.
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