Flavors of Reform: Electronic Monitoring Polices and Current Reform Movements

• In Event: New Perspectives on the Perils and Possibilities of Reform

Abstract

Scholars routinely acknowledge that the last decade has been characterized by bipartisan criminal legal reform efforts following mass incarceration. Following the murder of George Floyd and the uprisings of 2020, however, various stakeholders have debated what criminal legal reform should look like with growing public support for more abolitionist approaches. Electronic monitoring (EM) has long been a contested solution to the social, structural, and economic problems of mass incarceration. Using the case of these technologies, this paper examines how three different reform-focused counties are approaching the question of criminal legal reform from different perspectives. Drawing on 93 interviews with policy, legal, and industry respondents across these jurisdictions and at the national level, I find that conceptualizations about EM as a policy reform tool are situated in broader contexts of what it means to reform the criminal legal system. Differences in how stakeholders understand the problems with the current system and the local dynamics that determine the potential solutions both impacted how jurisdictions utilized electronic monitoring technology. This paper contributes to understandings of electronic monitoring as policy option, local policy processes, and how the current reform movement is unfolding.

Author

• Gabriela Kirk, Syracuse University