Understanding E-Carceration

Electronic Monitoring is a very big business. America is closing in on half a million people on ankle bracelets that can not merely give their precise location, but biometrics like heartbeats and even their tone of voice. At the slightest suspicion, the police can show up, without warrants, and haul them in again. This is the world of James Kilgore, who has written Understanding E-Carceration from his own experience and his work to stop it.

As America moves through mass criminalization, it has branched out beyond the walls of prisons, which are not merely bursting at the seams, but horrendously understaffed and underequipped as well. And since they represent far more than their share of prisoners, Blacks and immigrants also represent far more than their share of electronic monitoring (EM) clients.

While most will think EM is a privilege over being in prison, the truth is far different. Police add so many restrictions to movement that life becomes all but impossible on EM. The slightest infraction, from not having the bracelet charged, to stepping out to say, take out the trash, could have a patrol car screaming to a stop at the house, and the wearer being taken in and sent back to prison, no questions asked. Getting to a job interview takes days to negotiate with the minders, and employers are not thrilled to be told the candidate will try to get back to them later in the week.

Examples of reasons for being sent back to prison are the stuff of Alice in Wonderland: “These alerts,” Kilgore says, ”could have been triggered by anything from the wearer scratching their leg under the device to the user entering a concrete building where the signal could not penetrate. In 2013, journalist Mario Koran of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reported on a number of cases where people were sent back to prison because of false alarms triggered by their ankle monitor.”

And if that weren’t bad enough, it costs plenty for the privilege. Daily fees range from $5 to $40, up to $300 for setup and over a thousand if lost or damaged. For people arrested over crimes of poverty, being without work and saddled with this new bill of $240 a month can mean going without food. It can dramatically increase stress in the family.

EM is a new profit center, not a step up from prison. It is an open air prison to those in its grip. They are angry and bitter that they took this option rather than rot in jail. It is not only no better, it is often significantly worse. Going to see a doctor or the emergency room requires permission days in advance. And if the hospital happens to prevent the signal from reaching the monitoring center, the police will show up and take the patient away for breaking parole.

In other words, EM is far more intrusive and restrictive than prison. It is walking on eggshells within the tiny space of a home. And it’s not like wearers can move to another town and start over. They are confined to quarters.

It is also far more common than we think. In Marion County, Indiana, more than 14,000 people are on EM at some point in the year. “Students in a Los Angeles high school reported the presence of special rooms for students to plug in their monitors. For those without houses or without power in their houses, the local McDonalds has become a hangout not for the fries or the Egg McMuffins, but because it has wall plugs to connect and ankle monitor.”

So EM is in no way rehabilitation. It in no way reacclimates prisoners to life on the outside. It doesn’t help them socialize, or train or adapt to society. It is instead a further burden, a strain on finances and on family relationships. For the homeless and impoverished, it takes over their lives, if only in the search for recharging the thing before the cops find out. One man was commanded to go back into his burning house to retrieve the base unit or he’d land back in prison, Kilgore says.

EM is not so much an alternative to incarceration as a condition of release. It does not ease petty criminals back if they had committed minor offenses. It bears no connection to freedom. It is the most invasive surveillance Americans undergo. And there’s more to come, Kilgore shows.

Kilgore follows developments in hardware and software, as firms like Palantir develop platforms to help police predict where and when new crimes will be committed, based on all the data collected from EM, cellphones, security cameras, social media, facial recognition, police records and even drivers’ licenses. He says to beware of the internet of things, which will soon be contributing to tracking everyone’s activities – when they change the thermostat settings, turn the lights off and close the blinds, open the refrigerator door or watch tv.

But there’s more to Kilgore than that. He reaches out to Gaza, where millions have been prisoners in an overstuffed refugee camp for multiple generations now, with absolutely zero hope of becoming citizens of any country. They are monitored continuously, providing endless data with facial recognition, movements, communications and existence. He also enlarges the scope of the book with his takes on abolition – the potential to live without prisons at all. This all seems to be too much and off topic until you read about Kilgore himself.

If the name is at all familiar, it is because of Kilgore’s prominence in the Symbionese Liberation Army, of Patty Hearst fame. He escaped the clutches of justice and lived vicariously for a quarter of a century before being re-captured. He had managed to build a new life, even earning a Phd under an assumed name. After over six years in prison back home, he was released – onto EM. But his politics shine through. His bent towards reversing inequality and overcoming racism are present throughout.

He is still passionately against inequality in the justice system. He cites Dorothy Roberts: ”All institutions in the United States increasingly address social inequality by punishing the communities that are most marginalized by it.” And it is rapidly getting worse, as 12 states now permit not merely parole EM, but lifetime EM with GPS.

People on EM are discriminated against. Kilgore tells of one woman who gave birth in a hospital, when a staffer noticed her ankle bracelet and called the police. That forced her to remain there for an extra (and expensive) day and half while an investigation took place. EM carries the same sort of stigma that sexual offenders lists (with nearly one million listed) provide, with similar prohibitions on movement. EM can also be used to ensure wearers don’t come too close to someone carrying their own device, provided to protect them from the presence of the wearer. Anyone can call the police with suspicion of malfeasance, just because they notice the ankle bracelet. Charging it in a public place makes the wearer stand out, an obvious target for the paranoid or prejudiced.

And the courts don’t help. Wearers must sign away their constitutional rights to unreasonable search and seizure, unannounced, at any time and for no reason at all: “The US Supreme Court agreed that people on parole ‘agree in writing to be subject to a search or seizure by parole officer or other peace officer at any time of the day or night, with or without a search warrant and with or without cause.’ The ‘no-knock’ open-door applies not only to their person but to their residence, workplace and other surroundings. For people who are under some sort of carcereal control or surveillance, social impact bonds may ultimately expand state and corporate access to data related to new aspects of their daily lives, without the requirement of even a digital search warrant.”

The first half of the book is the strongest, as Kilgore has himself worked to reign in the use and abuse of EM. He reveals a subworld most readers will visit for the first time here. But when he branches out to Gaza, abolition, rights and freedoms, it’s more superficial. Those chapters lack the depth of his explanations of EM. Kilgore has not visited Gaza to bring back any sort of firsthand experience or reporting, while the various US community groups against prisons all seem to spout the same complaints, adding heat but not light to the argument. But through it all, Kilgore is organized, competent and authoritative, exposing yet another way life being made untenable in the age of high tech.

David Wineberg