The Electronic Monitoring System in Portugal: Organizational Issues and Lived Experiences

• In Event: Reforming Community Corrections: Effectiveness, Equity, and Innovation

Abstract

Electronic monitoring has grown in scale, reach and scope in several Western countries over the last few decades. The (alleged) benefits of electronic monitoring are widely promoted through political and media discourses that emphasize the potential reduction of prison overcrowding and associated costs, the maintenance of social ties and the reduction of reoffending.
In Portugal, the use of electronic monitoring has been increasing every year, as its use has more than tripled in the last 6 years, with a particular focus on bilateral monitoring to supervise the prohibition of contact between offenders and victims of domestic violence and stalking - this typology represents 60% of electronic monitoring measures in the country.
In this paper, based on ethnographic empirical research with individuals subject to electronic monitoring in Portugal, I explore the organizational paradoxes of the system on the one hand, and the lived experiences of monitored individuals on the other. Overall, the data show how the legitimizing arguments for the introduction and expansion of electronic monitoring are not supported in practice. The system is entrenched in the reproduction of social, gender, class and educational inequalities, and is based on the propagation of unrealistic expectations about the potential of electronic monitoring.

Author

• Rafaela Granja, University of Minho, Portugal