Harris County, Texas appears to now be the largest pretrial electronic monitoring program in the country. In 2019, this jurisdiction, which includes Houston, had just 27 people on pretrial monitors. Today the number has surpassed 4,000, exceeding Cook County, Illinois by more than a thousand. Even more shockingly the jail population, which declined in the early days of the pandemic, has now risen back to pre-COVID levels. In other words, the total combined number of people being incarcerated in the jail and in their homes is escalating.
Researchers and activists have been taking deeper dive into the expansion of electronic monitoring during the pandemic, trying to shedd some light on this punitive technology which has often operated without any form of accountability or even basic data. This piece in Truthout highlights some of the latest research on EM and some of the challenges activists are facing on the ground as state legislatures tackle pretrial justice reform and how electronic monitoring threatens to undermine any moves toward transformative.
The Challenging E-Carceration project at MediaJustice has launched a new “Hot Spots of Electronic Monitoring Map” which has links to stories and data about EM across the country. It is a clickable, interactive tool. If you click on your state, you can get a brief summary of event concerning EM, an outline of struggles there as well as links to stories and videos of impacted people. This is a unique data base that aims to rethink how we mobilize our data and information into power. We agree with Yeshimabeit Milner of Data 4 Black Lives that “often our own lived experience is the most important data.” You can visit the map here. Also if you want to add some information from your community or organization to the map you can go here.
The Challenging E-Carceration project helped produce the report No More Shackles: Why We Must End the Use of Electronic Monitoring for People on Parole.
You can get to the report on the Center for Media Justice’s page on our campaign here.
76 year old Gwen Levi was released from Federal prison after 16 years when the pandemic struck. She was set free from prison under the CARES Act but placed on an electronic monitor with strict rules. She was taken back to prison when authorities claimed she violated the rules of her monitor even though she was taking a computer class when they took her into custody. Eventually they let her loose. But why are we keeping people like under any kind of confinement. #Freethemall
See these stories about Gwen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yraoTxQToc
Mohawk Johnson was arrested during BLM demonstrations in Chicago on August 15, 2020. Five days later he was released from jail on a GPS monitor. Since that time he has been on virtual house arrest. Furthermore, his device has constantly registered false alarms, wrongly telling authorities that he is not in his house when he is at home. Mohawk, who is a creative artist in many genres-music, rap, comedy, video, has been chronicling these false alarms on his twitter account and has posted videos that describe the circumstances of the estimated 60 false alarms he has been subjected to by Cook County Sheriff’s office. His tweets depict the details of the technology he is living under. Because being on electronic monitoring limits his movement, Mohawk survives primarily by selling his music. You can check it out and support him here. To read more about his story, go here.
Mohawk, is not alone. Since the beginning of the pandemic the number of people on electronic monitors has risen by more than 50%, making Cook County one of the largest users of these devices in the country with over 3,400 people on monitors at every give moment. But while the number of people in the jail fell during the first few months of the pandemic, the jail population now exceeds the level where it was in February 2020. In other words, the pandemic has led to a total increase in the number of people incarcerated both inside the jail and in their homes. Similar processes have unfolded in San Francisco county and Allegheny (PA) county as well.
-Carceration 101, facilitated by James Kilgore, Media Fellow at MediaJustice. Tuesday April 27th. 1:30pm PT/ 4:30pm EST. RSVP here!
This session will draw on the work of MediaJustice’s Challenging E-carceration project and our engagement with impacted individuals. In this workshop, we will describe how electronic monitoring functions on a daily basis, why it represents an alternative form of incarceration, and how we can struggle for more transformative options in the fight for abolition.
The Illinois State legislature passed a massive criminal justice reform bill on January 13th. The bill had several sections that pertained to Electronic Monitoring. They are summarized below, courtesy of Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice.
Reconsideration of Electronic Monitoring: If a person is placed on electronic monitoring, the court must hold a hearing every 60 days to determine whether there is a less restrictive condition or set of conditions that would reasonably assure the safety of others and the person’s appearance in court.
Correcting and clarifying gaps in sentencing credit: Clarifies that pretrial electronic monitoring overseen by a Pretrial Services Department qualifies for credit towards any future custodial sentence, if any. This corrects an omission in the existing statute and resulting court practice and case law that gave some people credit for time spent on pretrial electronic monitoring and not others. (Page 534.)
Further confirms that home confinement need not be 24 hours per day (and that 12 hours per day shall qualify) or include an electronic monitoring device to qualify as home detention for purposes of sentencing credit. (Page 534.)
Guaranteed movement: At present, people ordered to the Cook County Sheriff’s pretrial electronic monitoring program (3,674 people on January 19, 2021) are subject to 24/7 house arrest by default. Many people are unable to access medical or mental health care, take care of their families, or even purchase groceries due to these restrictions. In addition, people are regularly denied permission to leave their homes for things like job interviews, funerals, and other essential activities. The PFA removes the requirement of home confinement and guarantees that movement permission will be granted for these essentials and at least two days per week without specified reason so that people are able to take care of themselves and their loved ones. (Pages 535-536.)
Makes pretrial fees permissive instead of mandatory: Removes mandatory charging of EM/supervision fees against people accused of certain drug crimes. (Pages 388-389.)
Creates 48 hour standard for escape charges: Requires that people on EM be in violation for at least 48 hours before being charged with escape. This addresses current practices in Cook County where people with minor violations are subjected to felony escape charges. (Page 538.)
On January 14th, the Pretrial Fairness Act passed the House and Senate in Illinois. Governor J.B. Pritzker has indicated he will sign the bill into law. The bill was part of a much larger piece of legislation (more than 700 pages long) that encompassed a number of aspects of criminal justice reform, including the elimination of cash bail. The Pretrial Fairness Act component included a number of provisions that curbed the use of electronic monitoring in the pretrial context. The Intercept’s Isaac Scher posted an important piece outlining the ways the bill limited potential forms of monitoring for people released from jail pretrial. You can read his piece here. Here is a summary of the main contents of the bill. Here is a link to the text of the bill.
Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County has been bringing out the big guns to defend his new GPS monitors. Cook County has been using RF devices primarily up until recently. Now Dart is joined in his fear-mongering campaign by Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago, co-author of the famous quirky book on economics called Freakenomics (not sure how this makes him an expert on EM). But they are mounting an all-out offensive both to justify more use of EM in the present (citing all the “violent offenders” that are being released due to bond reform and COVID-19) and circulate the well worn mantra about how we are going to put everyone on EM, slash jail populations, cut crime and everyone lives happily ever after. Levitt is pushing this big-time and it got major news coverage in Chicago (links to the videos)
But Dart’s focus on EM dodges the key issue that the jail population, after declining earlier in the year due to COVID responses, has reached pre-COVID levels of over 5,000 while in the meantime the EM population has escalated to over 3,000 more than at the outset of the pandemic. So all told, in the midst of this crisis, the Sheriff has more people under incarceration, counting e-carceration, than in March of this year. Plus, on November 16th, the 8th death in Cook County jail happened, with the passing of 85 year old Harold Graszer.
The use of electronic monitors in cases of domestic/gender-based violence is a hotly contested issue. We interviewed Kristie Puckett-Smith, Statewide Manager of the SMART Justice Project for the ACLU of North Carolina. Kristie, herself a survivor of domestic violence and incarceration, totally disagrees with the use of electronic monitoring in domestic violence cases. After her incarceration she worked as a counselor in a program for men who had histories of physically harming women. She explains how her approach of getting these men to accept responsibility for their actions while also acknowledging their humanity, made for a successful transformation.
The Challenging E-Carceration project helped produce the report No More Shackles: Why We Must End the Use of Electronic Monitoring for People on Parole.
