The global trade in (techno) corrections

Abstract

Electronic monitoring (EM) of offender technologies developed as responses to the problem of prison overcrowding and the enhanced focus upon re-introducing market values to the criminal justice sector, incorporating advances in information and communication technological infrastructures into new modes of crime control. At first glance, EM technologies appear to be tools with the potential to stimulate criminal justice innovation: new modes of virtual regulation suited to the digital world that global citizens inhabit. Yet, closer scrutiny of the use of EM across the globe unveils a sprawling, amorphous industry in commercial techno-corrections that both stimulates penal growth in domestic markets and facilitates policy transfer across international jurisdictions. The pioneering EM markets of North America, the UK and Australasia act as testing stations for the next generation of developers across Europe, Latin America and South East Asia. Viewed more closely, EM appears indicative of an intensification of surveillance and electronic population governance that has emerged from neo-liberal states and dispersed across the globe in a myriad of shapes and forms.