High-Tech Policing and Prisons – MediaJustice https://mediajustice.org MediaJustice and the MediaJustice Network are leading the fight for racial and economic equity in a digital age Mon, 21 Nov 2022 04:20:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 https://mediajustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-site-icon-32x32.png High-Tech Policing and Prisons – MediaJustice https://mediajustice.org 32 32 #NoDigitalPrisons https://mediajustice.org/campaign/nodigitalprisons-challenging-e-carceration/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nodigitalprisons-challenging-e-carceration Fri, 31 May 2019 04:14:59 +0000 https://mediajustice.org/?post_type=campaign&p=129 Featured Projects
Challenging E-Carceration

Challenging E-Carceration

The prison rate is dropping but the use of electronic monitoring is growing. Electronic Monitoring threatens to become a form of technological mass incarceration, shifting the site and costs of imprisonment from state facilities to vulnerable communities and households.

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Mapping Pretrial Injustice

In thousands of communities across the United States, courts are embedding risk assessment tools into high-stakes pretrial incarceration, supervision, and release decisions. The way these tools are used and the biases they can embody are usually not obvious to the public.

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By the Numbers

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77%

A ProPublica study found that Black people were 77% more likely than others to be incorrectly flagged as likely to commit a future violent offense by algorithmic tools.

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140%

The percentage increase in the use of electronic monitoring in the past decade.

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41

According to research conducted by the Media Mobilizing Project, 41 states and Washington D.C. have at least one county using a pretrial risk assessment tool.

About the Campaign

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

Resources

Websites

Reports and Publications

View All “High-Tech Policing and Prisons” Resources
]]> Drop Police Tech https://mediajustice.org/campaign/drop-police-tech/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=drop-police-tech Thu, 04 Apr 2019 16:21:30 +0000 https://mediajustice.org/?post_type=campaign&p=357

Key Stats

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117 million

The number of American adults affected by facial recognition searches. Facial Recognition technology is less accurate when running searches on people of color but in particular black women.

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1

Predpol is the number one company offering predictive policing software, using local arrest data to “predict” future crime. It is widely used in secret across the country by local law enforcement.

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100

Law enforcement agencies often use Stingrays to target and locate a specific individual, but the device may incidentally collect data on hundreds of people in the process. While federal agencies are required to get a warrant before using a Stingray, the same does not always apply to local police departments.

About 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]

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