United States, Florida
Florida Department of Corrections
AI Prison Communications Monitoring (Verus), supplied by LEO Technologies (Verus)
OperationalJournalismPAI-9771D6D1
- Body
- Florida Department of Corrections
- Country
- United States
- Area
- Florida
- Technology
- AI Prison Communications Monitoring (Verus)
- Supplier
- LEO Technologies (Verus)
- Status
- Operational
In routine use by the named body, on the evidence of a public source. - Stage
- In use now
- Since
- 2023
- Legal basis
- No dedicated statute; US courts have given wide scope to surveil prisoner calls for safety/crime prevention; all parties are notified calls are monitored
- Oversight
- None identified externally
- Evidence
- Journalism
Named reporting by a reputable outlet - Source
- Tampa Bay Times, republished by GovTech, 20 September 2023; Biometric Update, 3 August 2026; Correctional News, 14 May 2026
- Last checked
- Record code
PAI-9771D6D1
Notes
Florida DOC paid $2.5m from August 2023 for up to 50 million minutes a year of call transcription and analysis by LEO Technologies' Verus, which transcribes prisoner calls with Amazon Transcribe and flags calls for investigators using keyword and semantic analysis. The company extended Verus in August 2026 into continuous voice-identity tracking and AI video analysis for facility monitoring.
Update, November 2026. Correction to sourcing: the Thomson Reuters Foundation article of 16 November 2021 cited above does not mention the Florida Department of Corrections. The contract figures come from the Tampa Bay Times, republished by GovTech on 20 September 2023, which reported monitoring beginning in August 2023 under a $2.5 million contract with LEO Technologies that ran to 30 June of the following year and allowed up to 50 million minutes, and that the department declined to say how the technology is used or how many minutes had been recorded, citing a public records exemption for surveillance techniques. No source read shows what happened after the contract term in June 2024, so continued use in 2026 is not confirmed. The company announced new voice-identification and video-analytics products on 3 August 2026 (Biometric Update); the article names no Florida customer. Correctional News reported on 14 May 2026 that the Federal Bureau of Prisons had chosen LEO Technologies for a five-year contract worth more than $106 million.