What is Challenging E-Carceration?

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Challenging E-Carceration aims to change the conversation and policy concerning electronic monitoring and surveillance in the criminal legal system. In recent years mass incarceration has come under considerable criticism and been the focus of political mobilization from many quarters. But what is the alternative?

 

Will we merely exchange concrete and steel cages for devices like electronic monitors which convert homes in poor communities into jails?

 

Will we allow the state and corporations to use technology to restrict our movement and record massive amounts of information about our lives?

 

Challenging E-Carceration says no.

 

Challenging E-Carceration will use research, media, policy development and popular mobilization to limit and ultimately contribute to the abolition of electronic monitors and all forms of e-carceration.  In cases where such devices are used, we support efforts to reduce the harm done by this technology, including the harm done to loved ones and communities.

 

To accomplish this we will mobilize those impacted by mass incarceration and E-carceration, community activists, experts and those interested in social justice to curb the excesses of E-Carceration and advocate for transformative change that challenge the criminalization of the poor, the degradation of Black, brown and Native populations, and allocates resources to communities, not to punishment.

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This project will:

• Build a national coalition dedicated to reducing and ultimately eliminating the use of electronic monitoring 

• As part of harm reduction, develop a set of guidelines for monitors that center the rights of those on the monitors and their loved ones.

• Conduct research that centers the voices of people who have been on monitors and their loved ones

• Highlight practices and policies that respect the rights of those on electronic monitors

• Uncover and resist the ways in which electronic monitors mete out special punishment to people of color and track Black bodies

• Promote policies and campaigns  that support individual and community development rather than punishment

• Expose the ways in which electronic monitors contribute to building a surveillance state

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Challenging E-Carceration is hosted by Media Justice.

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