The Moat and the Archipelago: Surveillance Regimens and the Sense of Safety They Provide to Survivors

• In Event: Technological Dimensions of Victimization and Prevention

Abstract

In this paper we compare the shifts in the sense of safety experienced by women whose abusers were enrolled in one of two types of electronic monitoring (EM) programs. The EM of batterers in the United States has gone through two iterations, the first rooted in radio frequency (RF) technology, the second in Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, both of which have been studied by the present authors. Our comparison of program-participating victims’ accounts of their experiences suggests the RF approach yields a model of safety that can be likened to the idea of a moat, while the GPS approach generates a model of safety that can be compared to an archipelago. Qualitatively, the women in moat-like programs conveyed a different, and seemingly stronger, sense of safety than did women enrolled in archipelago type programs, even though the putative abusers of the second group of women were in important ways more surveilled than were the alleged abusers of the first group of women. This paper unpacks the sources of these discrepant senses of safety in these two kinds of EM programs and considers the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.

Authors

• Peter Ibarra, University of Illinois Chicago

• Edna Erez, University of Illinois Chicago