Ankle Monitors: Where Technology and Carceral Systems Interact

Ankle monitors are not the bright, kind alternative to incarceration that they are made to be. Advocates propose them as a solution to overcrowded carceral sites and excessive federal expenditure on public corrections agencies. Their logic being we can release certain incarcerated people to reduce prison, jail, and detention center populations and require them to pay for their monitoring to reduce prison expenditures. While there is potential for ankle monitors to achieve these aspirations, it is necessary to recognize how and where they can produce harm. Rather than being an alternative to incarceration, ankle monitors are a method of incarceration. They serve the same functions and hold the same power as prisons and jails with a more elusive form. In the current implementation of ankle monitors, we see individual bodies being transformed into sources of data to be capitalized upon by the government and private companies. Along with this, there is a shift of the financial burden of incarceration from prisons to the person being punished. This acts to further perpetuate the cycles of poverty and financial oppression that are seen within traditional forms of incarceration. Ankle monitor advocates also claim ankle monitors allow incarcerated people to enjoy freedom beyond prison walls and reintegrate into society. In reality, this is an oversimplification of freedom. Individuals with ankle monitors find themselves to be limited in their freedoms by restricted movement and stigmatization. They are unable to live a “normal” life because their ankle monitors prevent them from doing so. These people cannot move as they please, they cannot find and hold employment, and they cannot interact with people like they normally would. Ankle monitor usage must be critically examined and altered if it is to be considered a meaningful, gentle alternative to incarceration.