PROBLEM

Law enforcement agencies are increasingly presenting high-tech tools and algorithms as solutions to mass incarceration. Yet even as the prison rate is dropping, the use of electronic monitoring is growing—shifting the site and costs of imprisonment from state facilities to vulnerable communities and households of color. And as governments move to end the cash bail system, many are turning to pretrial risk assessments, placing another technological barrier between people and their freedom. These digital tools are false solutions and do not truly address the racial bias that exists in the criminal legal system.

SOLUTIONS

In 2018, led by MediaJustice Fellow James Kilgore, the “Challenging E-carceration” project released a set of guidelines to support advocates and policymakers to protect the human rights of those who are monitored. Over 50 racial justice, criminal justice and civil rights organizations endorsed the guidelines. [Read the Guidelines]

In 2020, Media Mobilizing Project and MediaJustice launched “Mapping Pretrial Injustice”, a website on Pretrial Risk Assessments, intended to inform our allies, advocates, and organizers leading anti-mass incarceration work, as well as encourage a broader dialogue around the fairness of algorithmic decision-making tools, accountability, and transparency. [Learn more]

GET INVOLVED

• Download our “No More Shackles” report, which calls for the elimination of the use of electronic monitoring for people on parole.
• Read and share our #NoDigitalPrisons blog, which contains first-hand accounts from people of color who have been forced to wear an ankle shackle.
• Visit the new “Mapping Pretrial Injustice” website and sign up to join the campaign.

Problem:
Local law enforcement agencies using “predictive policing” practices are rapidly adopting surveillance technologies, from police-worn body cameras to stingray cell phone interceptors, without the knowledge or consent of local communities. Without guiding policies, practices, principles or regulatory parameters, these surveillance technologies supersize the potential for discriminatory policing. [Read more]

Solution:
Working with comrades in our MediaJustice Network, we’re demanding local police departments drop their use of “predictive policing” and ban facial recognition policing. Furthermore, digital privacy legislation should be integrated into a national civil rights act for a digital age. We seek to prevent the Internet and technology from being used as a primary tool to illegally, unconstitutionally, and immorally surveil masses of people of color in this country. [Read more]

Get Involved:
California police want to turn their body cameras into face-scanning surveillance devices, the equivalent of requiring every person to carry and display a photo ID card at all times. Everyone has a right to go about their daily lives without being surveilled and tracked by the government, but this policing proposal will especially harm Black and brown communities that are already most likely to be criminalized. Send an email to a California Senator today demanding action. [Read More]