The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, with over 2 million people in prison alone.
As incarceration grows, the U.S. is turning to alternative methods to contain people beyond prison walls.
The Challenging E-carceration project defines e-carceration as “the use of technology to deprive people of their liberty.”
Ankle monitors are the most obvious examples of e-carceration. But it also includes facial recognition technology, license plate readers, and databases like Nlets.
Firstly, it builds on legacies of surveilling and controlling the movements of Black people.
It is also a form of data criminalization — which the Community Justice Exchange describes as when certain people are made into threats “based on data culled about them from state and commercial sources.”
Electronic monitoring can gather information like location tracking data and attendant metadata with few regulations on how long that information can be kept, or why.
Private companies that contract to provide EM to law enforcement typically store location data on monitored individuals and may share or sell clients’ information for a profit. This jeopardizes the safety and civil rights not just of the monitored, but also of their families, friends, and roommates who live, work, or socialize with them.
But the lines between criminal justice and other fields are not as clear as you might think.
E-carceration is a form of electronic monitoring — and that can be found everywhere. It is growing incredibly quickly in immigration contexts in particular.
For years, ICE has built its Alternatives to Detention program, which not only uses ankle monitors but also cell phone apps to track asylum seekers while they await trial.
In 2019, The New York Times reported that private e-carceration companies can charge people hundreds of dollars a month. For example, Daehaun White had to pay a private company $10 a day for as long as he wore an ankle monitor. To even get the monitor put on, White owed $300 up front.
That cost alone isn’t the only issue. Debt itself can come with other repercussions.
James Kilgore, the project director of Challenging E-Carceration, wrote that he once connected with a man who was on house arrest and could not afford his monitor fees. So probation officials decided to use his access to mental health care as leverage.