Journalist Mario Koran has just released a story for Wisconsin Watch on the cases of dozens of people in Wisconsin whose monitoring devices have malfunctioned, leading them to situations of severe stress and sometimes wrongly landing them back behind bars. The video of James Morgan included in the report is a powerful voice of the monitored. Visit the story at: http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2013/03/24/lost-signals-disconnected-lives/
Popular Mechanics, not a publication known for insight into the criminal justice system, is running an article about proposals for virtual incarceration. In this model people would live as they put it a “gamified” world where their movements, progress, blood alcohol, etc. would all be tracked in a cloud somewhere. Perhaps people with sex offense convictions and exclusion zones are the trial horses for this process now (read Russell Banks’ intriguing novel Lost Memory of Skin to get the idea). To read the Popular Mechanics piece click here.
BI is now monitoring some 35,000 immigrants for ICE. These are people who are awaiting the results of a hearing on their status. Here’s a brief excerpt from the article- for full text visit: http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/16/monitor/A6e2Hxv3hRAOJufFLqT7QN/story.html
Ralph Isenberg, a Texas real estate developer turned immigration activist, has financed multiple lawsuits against ICE for attaching the monitors to immigrants, calling the practice “cruel and unusual punishment.” He said he is trying to get ICE to remove a GPS device from a disabled woman in Oregon.
“These monitors are the most demeaning, shameful things that I think I’ve ever experienced,” Isenberg said. “These things are not being put on hardened criminals. They’re being put on housewives.”
Voice of the Monitored 