As you read this, prison inmates in Minnesota, Kansas, South Dakota and Alabama are ordering basic consumer goods, doing financial transactions or sending messages using technology developed in Nova Scotia.

Genesis Technology of Halifax has developed a system that allows inmates to organize their finances, communicate and order basic products, all from a kiosk in portions of jails that are open to the prison population. The company has installations in numerous facilities in the U.S., and CEO Chris Barker said the company’s target is to be in dozens of new institutions over the coming year.

The path has not been an easy one for Genesis. Barker, a programming geek with a business degree from Dalhousie University, started the company in 2001 and developed the worked with an American partner to design systems for prisons. The two parties parted ways in 2004-2005.

Barker managed to keep the company afloat for several years, working to launch his product eXpress in 2009, securing partnerships with a handful of other vendors. (Vendors are private companies that sell services to prison systems, and Genesis’s partners tend to target county jails, which have less paperwork than state and federal institutions.)

What Genesis has sold is a system that reduces the manpower needed to give inmates the products and services they need. Barker stressed that every prison has unique processes, but essentially the Genesis system revolves around a kiosk in a common area.

The prisoner can use the kiosk, which resembles a bank ATM, to access his own money, downloading it on a smart card, and the system allows family and friends to deposit money for him. The inmate can use the smart card to buy cold drinks at a vending machine. Or he can order things he needs, such as toiletries, snacks or other items. The software used in the kiosk serves as the bank for the inmates, keeping records of all their transactions.

The inmates can use the system to communicate outside the facility (say with an attorney) or internally with the prison staff. Staff can monitor and control all the external communications.

“By putting a kiosk in place, we can give (prisoners) all the services they need on a self-serve basis,” said Barker.

The Genesis system reduces costs by freeing prison staff from doing manual chores like ordering soap and shampoo for prisoners. It improves performance by installing a banking system that prison officials can monitor without having to know about accounting. Its message system can cut out the need for a mailroom, which could be a conduit into the prison for contraband items.

Barker added that he hopes to develop new products – first for the corrections system, and then potentially for other market segments. Genesis has never raised funds, and Barker said he does not need to do so in the near future.