GPS monitoring has been introduced as a potentially revolutionary technology to solve the problems that beset modern prisons – chronic overcrowding, uncontrolled costs, and the failure to correct behaviour – without compromising public safety. That, at least, is how its advocates represent it.
The Victorian Government has announced its intention to use GPS technology to track suspected and convicted arsonists. As authorities warn that the bushfire season of 2012-2013 could be extremely serious, the timing could hardly be more appropriate.
The Government ambitiously hopes that the technology will provide them with “the ability to track offenders in any location across Victoria, Australia or around the world”, and “the ability to track offenders in real time,” while its objectives are to ensure “a greater deterrence as offenders know they are under constant surveillance,” and superior correctional response as officers will be able to “quickly identify last known locality of offenders who abscond”.
All these objectives have problems. The technical requirements – global, real-time tracking – are all achievable with currently available active GPS systems, though subject to limitations such as interrupted signals, and the existence of dead spots. But these can be fixed by incorporating omni-directional antennae into the units, and zoning the monitored individual’s movements to avoid problem areas.
If technical and management issues can be overcome, does it make economic sense to sentence convicted criminals to monitoring?
Advances in technology and commercial availability have driven down prices to a point where prisoners may be supervised for $10 per day. But the real costs coule be much more. GPS monitoring may cost three times as much as the theoretical baseline because of the need for 24-hour availability to respond to incidents, and the time required to investigate false alarms and tamper issues.
The more pressing issue is whether this turn to techno-governance will achieve its social ends, and if so, at what cost?
The effectiveness of GPS monitoring is the subject of broad debate. Given that imprisonment cuts prisoners off from support structures such as family and friends, and deprives them of a livelihood, monitoring that allows a prisoner to keep his job, live at home and remain in the community may reduce the rate of recidivism. Studies of monitored sex offenders in California and Florida support the conclusion that rates of reoffending are lower than they are for incarceration. Similar effects have been noted in the Northern Territory, New Zealand and Sweden.
One issue that GPS raises is what it means for the state to adopt a form of surveillance which the target cannot detect, avoid or prevent, and to progressively aggregate to itself the ability to train its unrelenting, targeted gaze on private activities in order to build a comprehensive picture of the individual.
Of course electronic monitoring does not constitute an invasion of privacy when it is done with the full and informed consent of the monitored person. But if the monitored person is in effect a prisoner, are privacies that would be respected in a cell being erased in the world beyond it?
In the US Supreme Court case of Lanza v New York the court decided that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment guarantee to privacy even in public places, stops at the prison walls. Prisoners, because they are knowingly surveyed, cannot expect privacy.
In Victoria, prisoners’ rights as citizens are balanced against a public interest test designed to preserve the order and security of prisons and society. But the Victorian Charter of Human Rights has been used to enhance the recognition of those rights.
The Australian Law Reform Commission recommendation on privacy laws includes adopting the reasonable expectation of privacy standard, similar to the US.
The GPS tracking of individuals highlights the increasingly restricted space in which individuals can expect privacy. It also shows the redundancy of privacy laws which continue to be based on an outdated distinction between private and public physical space.
Brian Stout
Associate Professor of Social Work
This is a really important issue and the main points are well covered by the piece. In particular it is right to focus on the social ends, rather than being carried away by the technological opportunities. A primary concern is the liklihood of net-widening. GPS tracking as an alternative to immediate incarceration makes a lot of sense but then it quickly becomes used as an addition or alternative to a community sentence, or an aftercare service or even for suspects. It is absolutely crucial that we properly debate the social and civil liberty implications.
Incidentally, the title of the article is a bit misleading, it's not really about 'prisoners'.
Firozali A.Mulla
PhD
GPS has been helpful and it has been a nuisance in many ways. here is one example . You know what "prisoners’ rights as mention above is a human factor . It is their privilege to have little freedom after giving them the number and the striped suits. They deserve the freedom at least some unlike the animals we tag the chi on the ears so they do not go far away and we lose them. These are human and in the prison so why watch them in the places they need to go with the immense cash spent on the GPS. No one gives the GPS service free to my knowledge I thank you FirozaliA.Mulla DBA
Paul Leary
Service Provision Manager at ChainBreakers Recovery
The monitoring of offenders is a fact of life that will be a way of life for many varied offenders. I feel that the more sophisicated the device , the better it will be for a majority of monitored offenders, as the current system is unreliable & has adversly effected the wearer due to inaccurate readings, at no fault of the wearer. If this has to be done, lets get this technology right.
Colin MacGillivray
Retired architect
Good article. The US Supreme Court ruling that "Prisoners, because they are knowingly surveyed, cannot expect privacy" is sound. A prisoner who volunteers for GPS tracking agrees not to expect privacy. The cost of monitoring could be minimal as technology improves certainly compared to a cell. And if "rates of reoffending are lower than they are for incarceration" it's an obvious way to go. Or at least trial very soon.
Dianna Arthur
Dianna Arthur is a Friend of The Conversation.
Environmentalist
Excellent article.
The problem of re-integrating people back into society after being incarcerated is vital. A young person may make one dumb mistake and exit prison a dumb criminal.
One only needs to watch "Ghosts of the Civil Dead" particularly the final scene where our protagonist leaves jail and walks into the crowds at Parliament Station in Melbourne to make one think just who might be walking behind us, thinking who-knows-what.
James Hodgkinson
logged in via Facebook
"One issue that GPS raises is what it means for the state to adopt a form of surveillance which the target cannot detect"
In saying this, there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology involved in GPS tracking. This style of monitoring requires a device attached to the person being monitored. The technology in the 3M-brand solution deployed in Queensland, among many other organisations is an ankle bracelet that makes your average watch look tiny. Even the thickest offender should be…
Read moreBrian Stout
Associate Professor of Social Work
It's the idea of using GPS to track 'suspected or convicted arsonists' that is most interesting. It is a significant infringement of freedom, particularly for a suspected arsonist who has not been convicted, but is it justified? As we see in Tasmania, an uncontrolled fire can wipe out whole communities and cause multiple fatalities so it could be argued that anything that prevents fires is desirable. But, as with sex offenders, very little offending is committed by convicted, known individuals so there may be little to gain in return for the concession of an important liberty
Gary Myers
logged in via LinkedIn
I wonder what the next addition to the technology would be. There's plenty of fitness and exercise monitoring gizmos available, so in addition to location, it could track heart rate. That could suggest physical exertion, such as a fight or running, or indicate drug use.