The prison rate is dropping but the use of electronic monitoring is growing. Electronic Monitoring threatens to become a form of technological mass incarceration, shifting the site and costs of imprisonment from state facilities to vulnerable communities and households.
About
The #ChallengingEcarceration project, part of the #NoDigitalPrisons campaign at the Center for Media Justice, was launched in 2018 to contest the use of electronic monitoring in the criminal justice and immigration system. Use of electronic monitoring has doubled in the past decade, and the net is widening. Immigrants, young people, and adults on parole are now commonly placed under electronic supervision. While decarceration is a priority, punitive alternatives like electronic monitoring are false solutions that must be challenged.
In March 2018, led by Soros Fellow James Kilgore and the Center for Media Justice, the #ChallengingEcarceration project released a set of guidelines to support advocates and policymakers to protect the human rights of those who are monitored. Over 50 racial justice, criminal justice and civil rights organizations endorsed the guidelines.
Case Studies
Actions
Resources from Our Allies
- Chicago Community Bond Fund Report
- Samuelson Clinic’s Juvenile Justice Report
- Prison Policy Initiative’s 2018 Mass Incarceration Report
Contact Us
#ChallengingEcarceration, a project of the #NoDigitalPrisons campaign, is led by James Kilgore of the Urbana Champaign-Independent Media Center in partnership with the Center for Media justice. For additional resources on this project check out James Kilgore’s Challenging E-carceration website.
James Kilgore, Soros Fellow, Challenging E-carceration Project james@mediajustice.org
Myaisha Hayes, Criminal Justice and Tech Organizer, Center for Media Justice myaisha@mediajustice.org
Our partner: Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
Photo in Our Guidelines button By Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick / Bracelet électronique / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48368536