Abstract

The use of electronic monitoring (EM) technologies is increasing despite mixed scholarly and advocate discourse about their role in ongoing reform efforts. Existing literature on EM has attempted to determine the ideal use of these devices, debating various metrics and contexts. When considering this question, scholars have largely overlooked the perspectives of practitioners and policy decision-makers.

Drawing on interviews with 68 legal, policy, and industry stakeholders, I explore the imagined conceptualizations of the ideal participant for EM and how it functions in their lives. I find respondents drew on two existing ideal types of penal subjects: risky subjects and redemptive subjects.

I argue that stakeholders envisioned EM as operating differently for these groups despite little change in practice, as a tool for confining and controlling the former, while rehabilitating and supporting the latter. By reimagining this technology as a therapeutic intervention, not just a carceral one, I argue stakeholders justify its use across an increasingly broad set of individuals, allowing EM to remain relevant amid existing reform efforts.

Industry actors, particularly, promote EM's flexibility in achieving these opposing aims, highlighting the role of private actors in creating demand for their technology which may further entrench punitive practices in the name of penal welfarism and rehabilitation.