MediaJustice contends that electronic monitoring is not a helpful alternative to cash bail
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Imran Siddiquee, [email protected], 510.698.3800 x 403
Chicago, IL — With debates to develop alternatives to cash bail at an all-time high, MediaJustice will release a report today in Chicago arguing against the use of electronic monitoring as a means to reduce pretrial detention. The No More Shackles: Ten Arguments Against Pretrial Electronic Monitoring report, produced by MediaJustice’s “Challenging E-carceration Project,” will be officially launched at an event co-hosted by the Chicago Community Bond Fund this evening, featuring perspectives and testimony from directly impacted people, grassroots organizers in Chicago, and other leaders in the national movement against digital prisons.
“Technology will not solve the scourge of mass incarceration,” said James Kilgore, MediaJustice Fellow and lead author of the report. “We need solutions that provide resources and opportunities for people, especially in Black and brown communities that have been systematically criminalized.”
The new report asserts that electronic monitoring is “the most punitive of all pretrial release conditions.” It outlines 10 arguments against the use of electronic monitoring in pretrial contexts, based on years of research, the lived experiences of those who are directly impacted by monitoring, and those who have worked with communities where monitoring is widely used.
“We know that based on the lived experiences of people living on electronic monitors, these devices merely shift the site of incarceration from jails to our homes, in our communities,” said Myaisha Hayes, the National Organizer on Criminal Justice and Technology at MediaJustice. “These experiences should push us to think more critically about proposing carceral tools like electronic monitors as solutions to the issue of mass incarceration.”
The Challenging E-carceration Project, part of the #NoDigitalPrisons campaign at MediaJustice, was launched in 2017 to contest the overall use of electronic monitoring in the criminal legal and immigration system. The full report, No More Shackles: Ten Arguments Against Pretrial Electronic Monitoring, can be read here.
###
This week, @mediajustice is spotlighting all 10 arguments against pretrial electronic monitoring on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Launched in 2009, MediaJustice fights for racial and economic equity in a digital age. mediajustice.org
