High technology applied inside the correctional facility reinforces the deviated purpose of mass incarceration to exert control and punishment, exacerbating the negative effects of mass incarceration. In this section, I will use the application of technology and surveillance both in and outside correctional facilities as examples to illustrate my point.
AI technology is deployed in prisons and prisons to monitor incarcerated people.
Meanwhile, the supermax prisons are designed to separate the “high-risk” incarcerated people who are deemed a threat biasedly and unfairly from the general population. Incarcerated people in supermax prisons are locked up at least 23 hours a day and under rigid constraints. Rhodes argues that we need to consider the entirety of the supermax prison structure as a technological invention itself. It also resembles an industrialized factory: intense and fixed daily routine, computerized surveillance, and high efficiency managed by few staff. Supermax prisons signify the emergence of technoprisons consisting of seemingly inevitable high-tech solutions to problems that were created by itself in the first place. Supermax prisons are monitored, and documented, and controlled by cameras, surveillance networks, and information databases at all times; Emergency teams and specialized tools are also deployed for more effective control and management. Correctional officers can pull up information about all the prison cells and incarcerated bodies in the digital system, where incarcerated people's data falsely represents their motivations, expressions, and complexity as a person. Emergency response teams as "techno-warriors" equipped with weaponized technologies often barge in cell blocks to extract or contain incarcerated people for small infractions or even to prevent crises they envisioned. (Rhodes, 2007) The technological designs and implementations in supermax prisons hinder incarcerated people's privacy and subject their bodies to further scrutiny, presumptions, and oppression. They also abstract the everyday work of correctional staff to make their management techniques and styles a form of decontextualization and dehumanization. Supermax prisons are a modern extension of Bentham's panopticon and Foucault's theory on discipline and punishment in prisons, which lead to detrimental effects on both incarcerated people and correctional staff in terms of mental health and rehabilitation. (Rhodes, 2007, p.558)
The immigration detention jails can serve as an analogous example of a total institution. ICE facilities enforce biopolitical measures assisted by technological innovations that produce sovereignty and illegality upon detainees' bodies. They subject the detainees with intake screenings and physical examinations where they are strip-searched, registered, categorized, and injected medically. The system also logs their biometric information into the database, and signifiers like fingerprints and tattoos are documented to track their movements with the surveillance system and deter them from re-entering the US. (Radziwinowiczówna, 2010)Technologically enhanced surveillance and biopolitical identification methods dehumanize, neutralize, and criminalize immigrants, depriving them of the right to mobility. ICE also uses invasive phone surveillance devices and partnered up with a facial recognition company that has questionable privacy practices.
Suppressive technology and surveillance outside the correctional facilities are also contributing to the range and gravity of mass incarceration. The first generation of intensive supervision programs operates as an electronic anklet linked to a telephone modem and can signal the ISP officer the participant's location if they are at an unauthorized place. The second-generation technology shows the real-time location of the participant and allows them to be tracked. (Winkler, 1997)
However, these measures like electronic monitoring are not only invasive, inhumane but also counterproductive. People on probation or parole are very likely to be incarcerated again due to technical violations detected by such technologies, increasing the rates of incarceration over small infringements or unfair policies and regulations without contextual consideration. (Sawyer & Wagner, 2020)
We can see other surveillance technologies with similar logic in our everyday life. Youth of color are disproportionately subject to criminal justice surveillance and punishments at school through mechanisms like increasing police presence at public schools, facial recognition, attention tracking, and the teacher reporting system. This is a form of capital accumulation by dispossession where public education is privatized and considered personal responsibility. The constant surveillance, excessive policing, and disproportional scrutiny towards young people of disadvantaged backgrounds lead to the "school-to-prison pipeline" where the youth population is being punished by keeping them out of school and incarcerated due to "zero tolerance" policies on crime and educational inequality. (Fine & Ruglis, 2009)
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The process of criminalizing urban space via urban schools continued into the twenty- first century... The subsequent dramatic rise of “arrests for minor noncriminal violations of school rules” in inner-city America not only disrupted urban learning environments but also ensured that the incarcerated population of America’s big cities would become increasingly younger.”
-- Thompson (2010, p. 711)
Other racist approaches such as gang databases are also a reflection of black data under the era of big data, which seeks out criminalization, suppression, and surveillance of the black community, where they "appear as commodities, revenue streams, statistical deviations, or victors of risk". (Mcglotten, 2016, p.263) The technologies and surveillance adopted and utilized in and by the criminal justice system to facilitate mass incarceration focus on removal and exclusion instead of rehabilitation and restoration. The state weaponizes technology and terrorizes citizens, infringing the exercise of human rights democratic practices.