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.”
Salon.com has reported that a wide variety of electronic monitoring of school children is on the rise. This includes GPS-linked student cards as well as the “traditional” ankle bracelet. Check out the article at:http://www.salon.com/2012/10/08/big_brother_invades_our_classrooms/
Click here to read this insightful analysis by Mike Nellis.
(Link to interview: “21st century slavery, electronic style” (2 min.) to hear the rest of the video:Part 1 (12 min) Part 2: (12 min.)
Jean-Pierre Shackelford wore an ankle bracelet for almost three years as a result of an unfortunate criminal case. Although he had a Masters’ degree and a successful career, he found electronic monitoring a huge obstacle to getting his life back on track. Here he talks about his experience and dispels some of the myths about how electronic monitoring automatically grants people the freedom to work, participate in family activities and do whatever they must do to get their life back together post-incarceration.
His is but one of many stories that will eventually appear here to show how electronic monitoring needs to take into account the “rights of the monitored” if it is to live up to the promise of providing people with enough freedom to move ahead. It is not good enough to simply tell people they should be grateful that they are not in prison or jail. They need support plus some rules and regulations which guarantee them some rights to do what is necessary to be successful.
Two schools in San Antonio, John Jay High and Anson Jones Middle School are forcing all students to carry a student card that is linked to a GPS tracking device during school hours. Apparently students who refuse to carry the card are being denied privileges such as attending homecoming events. Reports have also surfaced of school administrators making threats to take more serious punitive action. Motivation for the GPS system seems largely financial as funding formulas reward increasing class attendance. However, some parents and local activists have opposed the cards and demonstrated outside the school.
While this is not the usual type of electronic monitoring we discuss on this site, this has serious implications for the potential to extend various types of monitoring to new target groups. Not surprisingly both John Jay and Anson Jones are more than 80% Latino.
To read more on this story visit: http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/12-10-10-3.php?cid=6299
This from the Newberry (South Carolina) Observer on September 10, 2012:
A Whitmire man was sentenced to time in general sessions court last week after not charging his electronic monitoring system.
Joe Nathan Neal, 42, of 1935 Drayton St., Newberry, pleaded guilty to willful violation of terms of electronic motoring.
He reportedly failed to charge his monitoring system after being told to do so by S.C. Probation, Pardon and Pardon agents.
Neal was sentenced to serve five years in prison for the offense.
If you don’t believe it, here is the link:
In this article, “Get Out of Jail Unfree,” William Saletan notes that only the rich seem to get out on bail with electronic monitoring while the poor languish awaiting their fate. He says ankle bracelets have become tres chic, a sign of status.
He has a point. Sure Lindsay Lohan, Martha Stewart and Charley Sheen have worn the bracelet. But Saletan also misses the point. A large number of people on monitoring are poor folks being monitored for no good reason. For many it is an addition onto a parole regime. Others get a monitor for driving without a license. Some juveniles (mostly African-Americans and Latinos) are even getting monitors for excessive truancy.
And most of these people are being made to pay user fees-typically $5-15 a day, sometimes more. If you don’t pay you might end up back in jail, even if you don’t have a job.
Most of this has little to do with public safety. Ultimately, public safety is about encouraging people to live peacefully with one another. Stringent regimes of electronic monitoring do not do this. They limit peoples’ opportunity, confine them to the house, and promote frustration and failure. Nearly everyone would rather be on a leg monitor than in jail or prison, but we need to set the conditions of electronic monitoring so they facilitate rehabilitation and re-entry, not transfer the punishment of the jail cell to our living rooms and kitchens.
Welcome to Voice of the Monitored, a website dedicated to waking people up to the realities of electronic monitoring in the US criminal justice system. Every day about 200,000 people face their day wearing an ankle bracelet. But with prison overcrowding and rising state budget deficits, those numbers will grow. Electronic monitoring is the wave of the future. It’s time for everyone to find out more about this-to make sure it doesn’t become a technological ball and chain. Here’s some links to begin to help you to know what’s up:
Link to the web page of Robert Gable, inventor of electronic monitoring who wanted it to be used as a way to send positive information, not increase surveillance and control. Read about how he feels betrayed by the way monitoring is used today:
http://rgable.wordpress.com/electronic-monitoring-of-criminal-offenders/
Is electronic monitoring an alternative to incarceration or a technological ball and chain?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/30/the-rise-of-electronic-monitoring-in-criminal-justice/
Is the rise of electronic monitoring the result of the failure of our prison system? Graeme Wood of The Atlantic magazine thinks so. Read his story here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/prison-without-walls/308195/
Read the story of big money in electronic monitoring: the $372 million contract BI Incorporated, now owned by private prisons firm the GEO group, signed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to supervise 27,000 immigrants awaiting court decisions.
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2010/03/16/who-profits-ices-electronic-monitoring-anklets-0
Should high school students with records of truancy be put on electronic monitors? Some schools in Dallas think so. Read about it at:
Voice of the Monitored 