Electronic monitoring is expanding rapidly. ICE is putting more people on monitors; authorities in Cook, Los Angeles and Marion (IN) and many other counties have escalated the use of ankle shackles as a supposed form of decarceration. The devices themselves are evolving-moving to phone apps which allow law enforcement to capture massive amounts of data well beyond simple location tracking. Moreover, state pretrial reform measures in states like Illinois, California and New York are having to confront the influence of EM among legislators and law enforcement.
We need to resist this spread of e-carceration and digital prisons. We also need to frame these devices as part of the surveillance state, not mere criminal legal policy tools. These devices not only track-they criminalize.
Activists and researchers from Mijente, Just Futures Law, Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Chicago Appleseed, Community Justice Exchange, CURB, George Washington University Law School, Cardozo Law School, as well as MediaJustice’s Challenging E-Carceration are on the move to resist. Their research is providing us with new tools and frameworks to resist at a critical moment in the struggle to fight for genuine transformation.
Come join us as MediaJustice hosts an in-depth webinar on October 5th in which researchers will discuss the findings of this research and will dialog with activists to consider how this work can amplify our organizing efforts.
The webinar will be hosted by Myaisha Hayes, Emmett Sanders, and James Kilgore of MediaJustice.