Bridge Over Troubled Water: The Role and Influence of Multinational Corporations in International Electronic Monitoring Implementation

• In Event: Innovations in Community Corrections

Abstract

Across the world, multinational corporations (MNCs) contract with community corrections agencies to produce and implement technologies like electronic monitoring (EM). Implementation science suggests that factors specific to the implementing agency (inner context) and their service environment (outer context) shape how the technology is used. However, little is known about how innovation producers like MNCs may affect the use of correctional technologies. To explore this, I examine the role of MNCs in the EM implementation processes of Colombia and Chile. Drawing upon key informant interviews and archival data, I map each country’s implementation process onto the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment framework. Doing so reveals that MNCs catalyzed and were highly influential in the early Exploration and Preparation phases of EM implementation in Colombia, but their role was far more delayed and peripheral in Chile. Nonetheless, MNCs in both countries wielded discursive, epistemic, and material power by bridging the inner context of the implementing agency with the outer context of the national and international service environments. In so doing, MNCs influenced whether, how, and with whom EM was used. These findings highlight the role of innovation producers in implementation processes and showcase how they can impact the use of correctional technologies.

Author

• Benjamin Mackey, Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence, George Mason University