SINGAPORE – Sentiment analytics may soon be used to help prison officers detect emotional distress when loved ones interact with inmates during tele-visits.

This will enable the officers to step in and intervene, and potentially defuse the situations, in a timely manner.

The new technology will be used in the autonomous tele-visit system that will go on trial in October 2025 and was on showcase at the Singapore Prison Service (SPS) and Yellow Ribbon Singapore’s (YRSG) Corporate Advance held at the Singapore University of Technology and Design on April 15.

Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo attended the annual workplan seminar, along with about 800 SPS and YRSG staff, and community partners.

In a press release, SPS said the autonomous tele-visit system, which was jointly developed with Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX), also has facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence.

For the trial, it will be deployed at the premises of community partner New Life Stories, and can be expanded to other locations, including family service centres or community centres.

Currently, visitors can visit their loved ones in prison face-to-face at the Changi Prison Complex for 20-minute sessions.

For 30-minute tele-visits, they can go to five prison link centres located in areas like Geylang Bahru and Tanah Merah, or any of the six satellite visit centres, in places like Assyakirin Mosque in Jurong and Woodlands Social Centre.

SPS said that in 2024, there were about 130,000 face-to-face and tele-visits between inmates and their families or loved ones.

Speaking to the media at the event on April 15, Assistant Commissioner of Prisons Soh Beng Koon, director of the transformation and technology division at SPS, said that currently, emotional distress during tele-visits is detected “by chance” when an officer walks past the booth and hears something, or if the inmate confides in the officer after the visit.

He said typical situations that can cause aggressive or emotional behaviour include spousal arguments, suspicions of a “third party” in the relationship, stress faced by inmates in prison or their loved ones outside, and financial issues faced by the inmates’ family.

Said AC Soh: “Sometimes during the visit, the visitors or the inmate can become hysterical. We want to make sure that we are able to come in at an appropriate time and to help to calm things down.”

He said that the new technology being tested out ca...