One Australian tech company is looking to break into the place most visitors to Mexico would want to break out of - the nation's infamous prisons system.
But forget stories of tequila filled jail wardens or sloppy tortillas - Argus Solutions is helping bring Mexico's prisons up to speed in curbing the contraband trafficking into its facilities.
The move will help Argus, which develops biometric applications for identity management, to crack the North American law enforcement from south of the border.
Argus recently signed a deal to sell its Australian-built fingerprint identification technology to Mexico's prisons for what it hopes will be the first of several sales in the North American market.
While the deal is modest - about $40,000 - Argus chief executive Bruce Lyman says it is an ideal launching point into the market.
Argus has teamed up with San Diego biometric firm ImageWare Systems to provide the software behind the fingerprint identification technology.
"We had actually been targeting a lot of correctional services opportunities that exist in California and Arizona," Lyman said. "In terms of timing, this other opportunity came up.
"The nice thing about it for us is that it becomes a North American market reference point for us."
The technology is currently used in several Australian prisons to manage the movements of both personnel and prisoners.
"We want to manage people visiting, we want to manage them in, we want to manage them through and we want to manage them back out, we want to know where they are at any given time in the facility," he said.
"We want to do it in such a way that the person who was in here this week is the same person who visits or is incarcerated in 12 months' time.
"A lot of people are trying to make sure people don't change identities and become part of that smuggling network."
Argus also provides iris scanning technology, which it hopes to sell in North America alongside its fingerprint software.
While the technology will help slow drug trafficking, Lyman said the greatest advantage would be a streamlining the management of people in the prisons.
"It no longer takes 15 minutes to process a visitor, it happens in four or five seconds," he said.
"So the whole business process - managing people in and out of the facility - is a real improvement for the wardens."
