No escape? Chinese VIP jail puts AI monitors in every cell ‘to make prison breaks impossible’
- Yancheng prison, which is home to high-status inmates such as Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai, hopes to use technology to monitor prisoners at all times
- Designers say AI network will be able to detect unusual patterns of behaviour and send an alert to the guards
A high-security Chinese prison has planted a guard in every cell, every corner and they do not sleep, do not eat, do not blink.
Yancheng prison, a facility directly run by the Ministry of Justice, is taking a small but important step towards robotocracy by employing AI to govern convicts.
The network of cameras will be able to monitor inmates’ every movement and flag up anything that is deemed abnormal or worrying to the human guards.
Some experts even believe that the system will make escape impossible because even if inmates are able to bribe the guards, they cannot stop the system from triggering the alarm.
But despite subjecting its inmates to unceasing surveillance, the jail has previously been described a “luxury prison” because of its VIP inmates and the relatively comfortable conditions inside.
Some of the high-profile residents include Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai, who is serving life for murdering a British businessman; Rui Chenggang, a former China Central Television anchor who was detained in 2014 for reasons that remain unclear; and a number of high-profile figures who were snared for corruption, such as Zhang Shuguang, the former high-speed rail network’s chief engineer and Nan Yong, former deputy chairman of the national soccer association.