Every month the offender calls the computer at the probation office in Miami. He speaks his pass code into the receiver. The computer asks him to repeat a special phrase, which he does.

"My voice is my password."

The computer successfully matches the voice to one of the 625 recorded in its database. It knows who is on the phone line. It knows where the offender is calling from. And it knows if any of this information has changed.

Thanks to a new offender database and voice verification system installed in 1997, the U.S. Probation Office for the Southern District of Florida needs only one probation officer to manage all of its offenders. Her name is Bunny Green.

"We're the only federal probation office doing anything of this nature," said Green, speaking to a group of corrections professionals at the Innovative Technologies for Community Corrections Conference in Boston on June 15th.

Green, the Senior U.S. Probation Officer in South Florida, manages what she calls a "super-sized" caseload. She estimates that in six months the offender database could fill to almost 1,000 cases.

"We'll take any case for the most part," she said.

With only one officer needed to oversee the offenders on probation, and with very little manpower needed to operate the program once it's built, Green said the automated system saves money in the long term.

"Prior to having this system you had to have the officers running all the things and going crazy," Ramiro Morejon said in a phone interview. He is the systems analyst who designed the database and installed the voice verification program at the federal probation office in South Florida. "As a result, we have only one officer for the southern district of Florida," he said.

The computer does a lot of the work for Green. It gathers routine information from offenders about addresses, phone numbers, employment and contact with law enforcement. It makes note of changes. It notifies Green if a person has failed to call the system. It produces letters to be sent to offenders if their addresses or phone numbers have changed. It even schedules random office visits for former drug users to give urine samples.

For people who are assigned a home curfew, the system randomly calls those homes to make sure the offender is there. If the person does not answer the phone, it calls back 15 minutes later, in case the person was in the shower or otherwise occupied. If the person still does not pick up, or if a different person answers-something that the voice verification system would notice-a message is immediately sent to Green.

The process is quite simple.

How Does it Work?

To enroll in the system, the offender typically comes into the office, where he uses an analog phone similar to ones most people have in their homes, explained Morejon to the crowd in the conference room in Boston.

To illustrate to his audience the simplicity of an enrollment, Morejon dialed the number for the system on speakerphone so everyone at the conference session could hear.

"Run one enrollment," spoke the machine at Morejon's prompt. "Speak your pass number now," it said.

Morejon punched in the password. 9-6-9-6-9-6-9. And then he chose the "enrollment" option.

"Speaker verification will be used to verify your identity," warned the machine. Then it asked Morejon to repeat three phrases three times, each time at the computer's prompt.

"My voice is my passport. My voice is my passport. My voice is my passport."

"The sky is blue. The sky is blue. The sky is blue."

"Good morning America. Good morning America. Good morning America."

And then the computer saved his file.

After enrolling, when an offender calls the system from home each month, he must have his voice verified before he can continue.

Once in the system, using *69, the computer makes a note of where the offender is calling from. If the number is new, it reports it and creates a form letter to be sent to the offender. If the person calls from somewhere else the computer does not allow him or her to report, said Morejon.

The offender answers seven questions on the phone, and the computer makes note of any changes to his previously recorded answers. Green can easily access the information on her office desktop and monitor the offender's whereabouts and activities.

If an offender needs to come in for urine analysis, the computer's "code-a-phone" system can randomly schedule appointments. The person calls in every morning to see if they need to come to the office. Using the offender database, the probation officer doesn't even know ahead of time when the appointments are scheduled, though she does have control over how many times a month the person must visit.

By helping to streamline all these tasks, the offender database makes it possible for Green to manage 625 probation cases herself. But most other federal probation offices are still lagging behind in their use of technology.

How Effective Is It?

The federal system "has not been very adaptive to change," said Green to conference attendees. "Everybody's been content to sit back and rest on your laurels."

While some people are resistant to change, Green said others have come to her and questioned the effectiveness of the system.

"People say, 'how do you know who is calling?' We say, 'how do you know who's filling out the paperwork?' said Green.

She justified the accuracy of the voice verification software by saying the system has been 93% accurate.

To show just how accurate the software is, Morejon ran an experiment. He tried to fool the system for the group in the conference room. He called back the system to see if it could verify his identity since he had just enrolled.

When the phone asked him to speak one of the three phrases into the receiver, he spoke in a high voice. The system did not verify him. Then he spoke the phrase in a very low voice. The system still did not verify him. Only when he spoke with his true voice did the computer recognize him and allow him to complete the phone call.

The system is not only accurate, but also cost effective, said Morejon.

Morejon said in 1997-when the system was new-it operated on a 90 MHz Hewlett Packard server. "[Today] you could have a Pentium 3 running this with no problem as long as you have plenty of hard drive space."

"The system is not very demanding for hardware," he said.

Overall, he said, the most important way in which the system proves to be cost effective is by eliminating the number of staff members needed to schedule appointments.

According to Morejon, without a system like this an officer would be assigned for every group of 60 offenders.

Morejon said the federal office in Washington D.C. uses the offender database he designed. He said they are equipped to use a voice response system, but have not decided to invest in that yet.

At the conference Green said she thought more probation offices should take advantage of opportunities like this.

"The technology is out there," said Green. "[But] you gotta be able to think outside the box."