Captivity in the Land of the Free? Exploring the Confining Effects of Network and System Avoidance

• In Event: Abolition: Practices, Lessons, and New Worlds

Abstract

In the last five decades, the rise of digital technologies has allowed states to expand their efforts to surveil, analyze, regulate, and control their populations. State surveillance is facilitated by numerous institutions and practices, such as policing, security devices, and record-keeping. Poor communities of color in urban inner cities experience the full extent of this surveillance. The constant presence of police and other surveillance technologies have led targeted populations to proactively limit their own behaviors as a form of protection from the intense scrutiny. The two types of focus are network avoidance and system avoidance. To date, nearly all studies on network and system avoidance have focused on the experience of men, however, there is some empirical evidence that women practice avoidance differently than men. This project will employ in-depth, semi-structured focus group interviews of Black men and women – who are among the most impacted by criminal legal surveillance – to explore gender differences in avoidant behavior. I will also examine how participants work to establish safety, well-being, and justice outside of the criminal legal system. Preliminary findings will be presented on some of the ways people and communities are working to navigate and mitigate the harms of surveillance and criminalization.

Author

• Brianna Ovalle, Old Dominion University