The Spread of Electronic Monitoring: No Quick Fix for Mass Incarceration
by James Kilgore
In a troubled criminal justice system desperately looking for alternatives to incarceration, electronic monitoring is trending. North Carolina has tripled the use of electronic monitors since 2011. California has placed 7,500 people on GPS ankle bracelets ...
Repackaging Mass Incarceration
by James Kilgore
Since my CounterPunch article in November 2013, which assessed the state of the movement against mass incarceration, the rumblings of change in the criminal justice system have steadily grown louder. Attorney General Eric Holder has continued to stream his mild-mannered critique by raising the ...
Are We Really Witnessing the End of Mass Incarceration?
by James Kilgore
“This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration.” – Natasha Frost, associate dean of Northeastern University’s school of criminology and criminal justice
After more than three decades of “tough on crime,” the New Jim Crow, ...
G4S, which bills itself as “the world’s largest security company,” has encountered rough going in the carceral marketplace in recent weeks. The latest episode in the troubles of this British-Danish security giant came with its public admission on November 18 that the firm had overbilled the British government roughly $38 ...
There are moments when our longings for social justice cloud our vision, times when the way we want the world to be blocks our understanding of the way things really are. A good example of this is the notion of the United States’ prison system as totally driven by profit-hungry ...
When we began our campaign to stop jail construction in Champaign County, Illinois in early 2012, I thought we were doomed. The grand plan to spend $20 million on this project seemed like a done deal. The Sheriff was driving the initiative; the leading lights in the County Board seemed ...
In recent months a battle has erupted at Mangaung prison in South Africa. Mangaung, located near the city of Bloemfontein, is one of the country’s two privately-operated correctional facilities. Managed by British-based G4S, which bills itself as the “world’s largest security” company, Mangaung reflects a troubled criminal justice system littered ...
Electronic monitoring (EM) looms high on the list of alternatives to incarceration for corrections officials seeking solutions to overcrowded prisons and budget deficits. First used in 1983, today some 200,000 people in the United States wear some sort of electronic monitor, typically an ankle bracelet required as a condition of ...
Private corrections company The GEO Group celebrated the holiday season by opening a new 1,500-bed prison in Milledgeville, Georgia on December 12, 2011. The $80 million facility is expected to generate approximately $28 million in annual revenues.
Though GEO (formerly Wackenhut Corrections) is hardly a household name, it is a ...
