The Optamo team, in collaboration with Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC), have developed the Inmate Assignment Decision Support System (IADSS) to optimize the assignment of the inmates to facilities and schedule their rehabilitative programs. Implementation of IADSS has equipped the PADOC to efficiently and accurately make inmate assignment decisions based on legal restrictions and best practice constraints, including security, rehabilitation programing, medical and mental health needs, education and vocational requirements, and distance of the inmates to home. IADSS has enabled the PADOC to reduce the operational costs by $2.9 Million in the first year of implementation and the projection of the savings over five years is over $19 Million.
IADSS has also been implemented at the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) and has been used for the daily assignment of inmates to facilities and housing units since July 2021. IADSS has enabled the GDC to save millions of dollars annually.
To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that operations research methodologies have been incorporated directly into the business operations of correctional systems. The successful implementation of IADSS in correctional systems opens a rich and untouched area for the application of operations research and optimization methodologies.