For years, senior living facilities have harnessed television to create a sense of community and facilitate communication with residents. But TV may be even more useful in correctional facilities. Therefore, I’ve been investigating the ways jails and prisons are using television to promote good behavior, create safer working conditions for staff, and enable correctional leaders to turn innovative ideas into best practices.

At a correctional facility in Alabama, the hum of televisions blends with the sounds of controlled movement and distant conversations. It’s not unusual for TVs to provide background noise in jails, but here, the screens serve a more significant purpose. They are a conduit for education, reform, and community building. Through a pioneering use of technology, the facility has turned its in-house television network into a dynamic tool for rehabilitation and staff training—a far cry from the static channels that once dominated such institutions.

Imagine

Jails are traditionally places of restriction but imagine transforming them into spaces that encourage growth and provide learning opportunities. This is not a far-off concept but a tangible reality in some United States correctional facilities, thanks to the repurposing of existing television systems.

For example, a Florida facility uses in-house television to share religious services across its network, offering spiritual support without physical attendance. The “chaplain channel” simultaneously broadcasts live Sunday religious services to two locations. It also records services for automatic playback later in the week.

Correctional systems in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, and California are using TV to foster innovation and improve jail conditions. And they are enterprise-level solutions, meaning they scale to support multiple facilities, whether county-, state-, or nation-wide.

The operative technology is what’s called a “smart headend communication device.” This is a control center that enables sheriffs and staff to customize on-screen content, just as you see in senior living centers and sports stadiums.

(For the technically curious, a headend receives television signals and processes them for distribution over a private cable television network. A smart headend enables you to manage programming. That is, you the user controls the system.)

Adding this smart headend module to the jail’s existing television network allows non-technical users to input various media sources and transform them into custom TV channels accessible throughout the facility. They’re easy to manage, too.

Innovate

Jails serve important roles as temporary residences in the larger correctional process. But residents cannot be expected to do anything during those times. Therefore, smart headend modules manage lineups that include movies, religious services, educational content, music, health and fitness, and information geared specifically to a jail’s population.

Innovations such as these improve the experience of residents and staff alike.

Collaborating with a local university, a multi-location Colorado jail system is using this TV technology to stream a radio channel that had previously been restricted to places with internet connections and devices.

A women’s correctional facility in Colorado expanded its educational offerings by adding 10 new channels, including ones developed from PowerPoint slides and pre-recorded training videos.

With a smart headend module, any meaningful event, such as a program graduation ceremony, can be live-streamed across your channel to the entire population to promote and encourage learning, achievement, and pro-social engagement. This can help reduce facility stress, making day-to-day supervision a little easier.