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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Electronic Monitoring Has
Widened Its Net Amid COVID</h1>
<dt class="gmail-meta-label">By<span> <a class="gmail-url
gmail-fn"
href="https://truthout.org/authors/james-kilgore/"
rel="author" moz-do-not-send="true">James Kilgore</a></span>
& <span><a class="gmail-url gmail-fn"
href="https://truthout.org/authors/emmett-sanders/"
rel="author" moz-do-not-send="true">Emmett Sanders</a></span>,
October 4, 2021<br>
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<p>For Mohawk Johnson, the next call from the Cook
County Sheriff’s department may come at any time. It
could be at 4 a.m. or smack in the middle of dinner.
Over the course of a year on house arrest on a GPS
monitor, Johnson estimates the sheriff’s department
has called more than 60 times accusing him of being
AWOL when he is asleep in his bed, watching television
or taking a shower. As a self-defense mechanism,
Johnson has posted videos of many of these calls to
his</p>
<p>Twitter account <a
href="https://twitter.com/i/status/1438702826344128513"
moz-do-not-send="true">showing</a> himself crawling
out from under the blankets to answer the phone or
trying to relax in front of <em>Captain America</em>
on the TV screen as the call arrives. Johnson’s
tweets, along with high-profile cases like those of
activist lawyer <a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2021/08/25/ecuador-chevron-donziger"
moz-do-not-send="true">Steven Donziger</a> and
Baltimore grandmother <a
href="https://truthout.org/articles/biden-upholds-last-minute-trump-memo-that-would-send-4000-people-back-to-prison/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Gwen Levi</a><u>,</u> have
given the punitive vagaries of electronic monitoring
(EM) a touch of media play.</p>
<p>But until recently, researchers have not stepped
forward to provide data to substantiate stories like
Johnson’s and provide fuel for activist campaigns
against EM. The lack of data about electronic
monitoring is shocking. To begin with, no national
census of monitors exists. While prisons and jails
produce population counts regularly, the last attempt
at a national tally of electronic monitors was a 2016
<a
href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/09/use-of-electronic-offender-tracking-devices-expands-sharply"
moz-do-not-send="true">census</a> by Pew Charitable
Trusts which concluded that 131,000 devices were in
use, excluding those used by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). Yet Pew’s total seems questionable,
since a 2009 <a
href="https://www.appa-net.org/eweb/docs/appa/pubs/OSET_2.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">report</a> by the late EM
expert Peggy Conway placed the total number of
monitors at nearly 200,000. State and local
authorities shed little additional light. Most keep no
serious records of who is on the monitor, how often
people are returned to custody due to violating the
frequently irrational rules of EM or how many false
alarms trigger undue arrests or harassment. Even basic
annual reports or assessments are rare. The major
companies that provide the devices and often run the
programs — BI, Satellite Tracking of People (STOP),
Sentinel, Attenti and SuperCom — are also notoriously
secretive about their data. While knowledge of the
harms done by these technologies to individuals like
Johnson and Donziger has become well known, the
normalization of GPS trackers in smartphones, fitness
devices that record biometrics and the addition of <a
href="https://mediajustice.org/news/amazon-doesnt-deserve-you/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Amazon Ring</a> to millions
of front doors have softened popular concerns about
the impact of carceral technologies like GPS ankle
monitors.</p>
<h2><strong>New Research</strong></h2>
<p>However, in the past three years,
activist-researchers have begun to apply a critical
lens to electronic monitoring. Three factors have
precipitated this shift. First, the rise of the
movement to end cash bail often prompted authorities
to release people on monitors. Impacted individuals
and many activists quickly realized release did not
always equate with freedom. Under EM, people often
landed back in jail for violating some petty rule.
Alternatively, regulations like those applied to
Mohawk Johnson frequently subjected them to extreme
regimes of confinement in their own homes. As Timothy
Williams, who spent several months on a pretrial
monitor in Chicago <a
href="https://chicagobond.org/2019/12/02/no-more-shackles-arguing-against-pretrial-electronic-monitoring-video-release/"
moz-do-not-send="true">put </a>it, electronic
monitoring is “hell … the same as jail. There’s no
difference.” Second, ICE has steadily <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/12/immigrants-report-physical-emotional-harms-electronic-ankle-monitors"
moz-do-not-send="true">increased</a> the use of GPS
tracking and other surveillance devices on immigrants.
Lastly, during the pandemic, popular pressure to
release individuals from the pressure cookers of
carceral spaces prompted a turn to releases on
monitors. As David Gaspar, The Bail Project’s national
director of operations noted to <em>Truthout</em>,
“It has become ridiculous how quick they are to hand
out what has become their go-to piece of jewelry.”
Since March 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons alone
has <a
href="https://www.bop.gov/foia/docs/Home_Confinement_Milestone_8.23.21.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">granted early release to</a>
over 30,000 people, thousands of whom landed on house
arrest with an ankle monitor.</p>
<p>Researchers like Ruha Benjamin, author of the
prize-winning <a
href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Race+After+Technology:+Abolitionist+Tools+for+the+New+Jim+Code-p-9781509526437"
moz-do-not-send="true"><em>Race After Technology</em></a>,
George Washington University law professor Kate
Weisburd, Chaz Arnett, Ali Panjwani and Puck Lo, as
well as organizations like Mijente, Just Futures Law,
Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Chicago Appleseed
Center for Fair Courts, and the Community Justice
Exchange have led important efforts to unearth the
details of electronic monitoring. All told, the
results of this new wave of research are providing the
kind of data needed to fuel campaigns to block
expanded use of electronic monitoring and other
punitive technologies, often referred to as “<a
href="https://www.challengingecarceration.org/what-is-e-carceration/"
moz-do-not-send="true">e-carceration</a>.” </p>
<p>At least three studies are surfacing previously
unknown details about both the policy and operations
of electronic monitoring and the overall industry. “<a
href="https://issuu.com/gwlawpubs/docs/electronic-prisons-report?fr=sOGI5NDcxODg3"
moz-do-not-send="true">Electronic Prisons: The
Operation of Ankle Monitoring in the Criminal Legal
System</a>,” released by George Washington
University (GWU) Law School in late September,
constitutes the most comprehensive examination yet of
EM policies and laws. In this study, a team led by
Kate Weisburd collected and analyzed 247 records from
101 agencies in 44 states and the District of
Columbia. Their scope included pretrial and
post-prison EM, as well as juvenile applications of
monitors. Weisburd, who in her courtroom days defended
dozens of youths placed on electronic monitors, told <em>Truthout</em>
she aims to add “to the efforts of community
organizers and advocates who are pushing back against
the expansion of e-carceration.” The GWU work depicts
“how monitoring is used, including the terms and
conditions that people on monitors must abide by.”
Weisburd said their project documents “the restrictive
nature of monitoring that, like prison, infringes, if
not eliminates, fundamental rights and undermines
privacy, financial security, autonomy and dignity.”
Some of the restrictions the team unearthed were
staggering. In Kanawha County, West Virginia, for
example, authorities compel a person on EM to agree
that: “I will not allow persons of disreputable
character to visit my residence during the period of
home confinement.” In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, those on
monitors are compelled to conduct themselves in “an
orderly manner at all times.” No definition of
“disreputable” or “orderly manner” are offered.</p>
<p>The Louisville Metro court specifies that a person
under “home incarceration” must remain inside the
house proper. For those authorities, “inside means no
decks, patios, porches, taking out the trash, etc.” In
Milwaukee, individuals are only allowed to go to the
grocery store for one hour per week.</p>
<p>The language of the rules is often as punitive as
their content. The Florida Department of Corrections
informs people under their program: “You will charge
the tracking device for a minimum of four (4) hours a
day and at all times while at home unless otherwise
directed.” In Kansas, a person is banned from sleeping
while charging their device.</p>
<p>Privacy is another key issue. In San Francisco,
people on monitors must “acknowledge that my EM data
may be shared with other criminal justice partners.”
No specific partners are mentioned. Six agencies
actually require people on EM to submit to warrantless
searches of their cellphones and other devices. The
report also notes how devices are increasingly adding
on features like two-way audio, meaning that the
person’s ankle can operate like a speaker phone,
“talking” loudly to the person on the device at any
moment chosen by law enforcement. This creates a fear
on the part of the user that the device may start
“talking” while a person is at work or in other places
where such an interruption would be problematic.</p>
<p>Weisburd’s team also compiled a detailed list of the
daily user fees for many of the jurisdictions. These
charges, simply for being on the monitor, range from
$1.50 per day in Lancaster County, Nebraska, to $47
per day for a self-employed person in Sacramento
County, California. The charges in Sacramento would
add up to over $17,000 per year, more than half the
earnings of a person on minimum wage.</p>
<p>While the GWU study provided a broad overview, the
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts produced the
most detailed case study of an EM program to date: <a
href="https://www.chicagoappleseed.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/202109_10-Facts-EM-Cook-County-FINAL.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">10 Facts About Pretrial
Electronic Monitoring in Cook County</a>. Focusing
on what is the largest and likely the most punitive
pretrial electronic monitoring program in the country,
this research aimed to refute <a
href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/electronic-monitoring-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt/2570027/"
moz-do-not-send="true">arguments</a> advanced by
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart that people on pretrial
release on electronic monitors were contributing to
heightened violence in Chicago. Appleseed Senior
Policy Analyst Sarah Staudt, who led this research
project, systematically refuted Dart’s allegations. In
the kind of deep-dive research previously unseen in
the world of electronic monitoring, Staudt exposed how
the Cook County EM program has been dramatically
expanding since the pandemic, that people are being
kept on house arrest for longer periods than ever, and
like every aspect of the criminal legal system, EM
disproportionately impacts Black people. While Black
people only comprise 23 percent of the county’s
population, they constitute 74 percent of those on
electronic monitoring.</p>
<p>The Appleseed document totally undermines Dart’s
contentions that EM and pretrial justice reform are
linked to violence. Contrary to Dart’s allegations,
which are not supported by data, Staudt’s calculations
show only 1 person in 12 on electronic monitoring is
arrested on new charges. While the number of charges
for acts of violence committed by people on a monitor
has not grown, the figures for people sent back to
jail for minor violations of monitoring rules has.
Reincarceration for acts like failing to charge a
battery, returning home late from work or not having a
place to live more than quadrupled from 2019 to 2021.
Moreover, people are spending longer periods on
pretrial monitoring. At the time of the Appleseed
research, over 1,000 people had been on EM for over a
year, proving that Mohawk Johnson is not an exception.
Lastly, the report debunked one of the major
motivations for pretrial EM, ensuring attendance at
court appearances. A survey of Cook County EM from
2016-2018 showed virtually equal rates of appearance
for all court appointments, for those on a monitor
(83.52 percent) and those not on a monitor (82.75
percent). The study concluded that EM has “no clear
benefit to the public” and at an annual cost of over
$30 million, represents a drain from funding streams
that could “prioritize investments in grassroots,
non-court-related services to support people involved
in the criminal legal system.”</p>
<p>While research in the criminal legal system has
opened up lots of new territory, equally important <a
href="https://www.nationalimmigrationproject.org/PDFs/community/2018_23Oct_whos-behind-ice.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">advances</a> in unearthing
the complexities of electronic monitoring have come
from immigrant rights activists. A collaboration among
Freedom for Immigrants, Immigrant Defense Project and
the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law surveyed the
harms of EM for people under the authority of ICE. In
perhaps the first serious look at the health
implications of being on EM, their report found that
more than 70 percent of the 147 respondents reported
“aches, pains and cramps,” 55 percent reported
numbness and roughly 1 in 5 said they had received
electric shocks from the device. These findings raised
possibilities for further study and even litigation
concerning the health effects of ankle shackles, an
aspect of EM that has been ignored by authorities and
providers for decades. This work has melded with
studies of the role of Big Tech in immigration carried
out by a collaboration involving <a
href="https://mijente.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/WHO%E2%80%99S-BEHIND-ICE_-The-Tech-and-Data-Companies-Fueling-Deportations-_v1.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">Mijente</a>, <a
href="https://justfutureslaw.org/resources/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Just Futures Law</a>,
Immigrant Defense Project and the National Immigration
Project.</p>
<h2><strong>EM and State Struggles</strong></h2>
<p>The expansion of EM research coincides with intense
struggles in state legislatures over pretrial reform
where electronic monitoring has become an important
contestation point. These fights demonstrate a growing
understanding that electronic monitoring, like cash
bail, cannot be attacked with a single-issue focus.
Pilar Weiss, the director of the Community Justice
Exchange, a network that organizes over 100 community
bail funds, argues that framing is critical. She
stresses that letting people out of jail without
payment of bail opened the door to a range of
post-detention conditions of which EM was one of the
most common and likely the most restrictive. She
reminded <em>Truthout</em> that “the problem is not
with the person but with the system.”</p>
<p>In at least three states, activists made serious
interventions to block the use of electronic
monitoring as part of legislative reform. In New York,
blockage of EM came via banning the introduction of
private companies or fees in monitoring programs. This
forced jurisdictions to assume operational and
financial responsibility for EM, a burden most
authorities weren’t willing to cover. In the words of
Katie Schaffer, who was active in the legislative
campaign as director of advocacy and organizing for
the Center for Community Alternatives, the bill made
EM “functionally not an option.”</p>
<p>In Illinois, sparked by the work of the statewide <a
href="https://endmoneybond.org/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Coalition to End Money Bond</a>,
the legislature took a different path, passing the
Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA), the first
legislation in the country to ban cash bail. While the
activist critique of EM was not enough to convince the
legislature to totally ban electronic monitoring, the
PFA ultimately called for mandatory court hearings to
place a person on EM, coupled with a compulsory review
of the electronic monitor’s continued use after 60
days. As Sharlyn Grace, a past leader of the Coalition
recently <a
href="https://inquest.org/organizers-change-whats-possible/"
moz-do-not-send="true">wrote</a>, the reforms “take
away some power and prevent harmful practices from
continuing unchecked.”</p>
<p>The California process was more complicated and
remains unresolved. After many years of battling over
pretrial reform, authorities advanced <a
href="https://www.ppic.org/publication/reforming-pretrial-justice-in-california/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Proposition 25</a> to the
November 2020 ballot. The proposition aimed to enact
SB10, a bill which would have ended cash bail via
intensive use of racially biased risk assessment tools
and expansion of harsh conditions of release like EM.
While mainstream Democrats and some progressives
supported Prop 25, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch,
Californians United for a Responsible Budget, and a
broad spectrum of abolitionists and radical reformers
campaigned against Prop 25. Predictably, the bail bond
industry also opposed the measure because it would
have nullified most of their revenue stream. In the
end, 55 percent of voters <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-03/2020-california-election-prop-25-results"
moz-do-not-send="true">opposed the referendum</a>.
Activists hoped this would bring the use of risk
assessment-based reform to a halt and provide space
for community-driven initiatives based on <a
href="https://www.participatorydefense.org/"
moz-do-not-send="true">participatory defense</a> and
transformative justice. These approaches mobilize
families and communities to contest individual cases
as well as push to change the underlying structures
that continue to propel Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and
other marginalized folks into the system. But in the
spring of this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom stepped in and
<a
href="https://www.davisvanguard.org/2021/05/ca-governors-revised-may-budget-includes-140-million-investment-in-flawed-pretrial-pilot-programs/"
moz-do-not-send="true">allocated $140 million</a> to
place pretrial services statewide under the authority
of the Department of Probation, effectively sidelining
community-led efforts. This move will doubtless lead
to the expansion of electronic monitoring. As
campaigner Ivette Ale told <em>Truthout,</em>
“Probation loves EM.” In their capacity as a leading
member of the CARE First Coalition, which aims to <a
href="https://carefirstca.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Letter-Opposing-140M-Probation-Pretrial-Expansion-Senate.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">derail</a> Newsom’s moves,
Ale told <em>Truthout</em> the organizing strategy is
to build grassroots structures in each of the state’s
58 counties. “We only win by mobilizing more people
than anybody,” Ale emphasized.</p>
<p>Grassroots efforts have scored many victories in the
fight against mass incarceration’s numerous fronts.
But perhaps pushing back against technology also
requires some additional strategies. Puck Lo, research
coordinator at Community Justice Exchange, contends,
“We need to go someplace we haven’t been before and to
do that we need to think differently.” In the realm of
surveillance technology, Lo views the merging of
location tracking and biometrics as creating more
potential for the criminalization of individuals
through the use of technology. She maintains this may
direct us to needing to find ways to “erase databases
rather than control them.” But whether the aim is
controlling the technology or erasing it, the key
rests with building popular support for measures to
undermine the power of Big Tech, EM companies and
elected officials like Newsom and Sheriff Tom Dart who
provide finance and political cover for widening the
net of e-carceration.</p>
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