Building Prisons Without Walls Using GPS Devices 545
Hugh Pickens writes "Graeme Wood writes in the Atlantic that increasingly GPS devices are looking like an appealing alternative to conventional incarceration, as it becomes ever clearer that traditional prison has become more or less synonymous with failed prison. 'By almost any metric, our practice of locking large numbers of people behind bars has proved at best ineffective and at worst a national disgrace,' writes Wood. But new devices such as ExacuTrack suggest a revolutionary possibility: that we might do away with the current, expensive array of guards and cells and fences, in favor of a regimen of close, constant surveillance on the outside and swift, certain punishment for any deviations from an established, legally unobjectionable routine. 'The potential upside is enormous. Not only might such a system save billions of dollars annually, it could theoretically produce far better outcomes, training convicts to become law-abiders rather than more-ruthless lawbreakers,' adds Wood. 'The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost, and with considerably less inhumanity in the bargain.'"
Already used in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Track all prisoners - and their friends & fami (Score:3, Interesting)
In order for this to work properly, the surveillance must keep an eye on the prisoners. But humans are group animals - prisoners outside a prison will have contact with innocent citizens. So, logically, surveillance will be forced to keep an eye on everybody.
Checking whether they show up at work at the right time, and leave at the right time can be automated.
But how to check what a "prisoner" does in its free time? How to make sure they don't engage in other illegal activities? You must keep an eye on the surroundings, and all the people who are in contact with the convict.
I conclude that this plan has the potential to be the biggest privacy failure in history.
The prisoners win, the system wins, but the innocent bystanders who never do something wrong will have to fear that the nation-wide surveillance will be massively extended. (But hey, they got nothing to hide, right?)
But everybody will break the law at some point... and with such a huge surveillance, soon the government will own everybody. Ok, ok, I might exaggerate a bit... but this is no development to applaud for.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, neither does incarceration. ;-)
In the US, particularly here in California, the prison industry and unions have a disproportionate influence on the workings of the criminal justice system.
The way I see it, the only way a GPS-based system would be implemented as anything but a pilot program would if there were huge amounts of money to be made. If saving money was the issue, we could reduce crime, costs, and prison populations starting tomorrow simply by writing each offenders a monthly check for a portion of their incarceration cost. Last I heard, that would give each evil do-er a comfortable middle class existence.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Only as long as convicts aren't forced to sign a waiver stating they won't sue if the device malfunctions and zaps them by accident.
having done time myself....... (Score:1, Interesting)
Having done 5 years federal time myself, I know something about this. I was busted in 1992, did 5 years, got out and havn't been in trouble since, except for too many speeding tickets. I think I'm the exception. Most go back. They call it life on the installment plan. The thing is, once you get used to being inside you loose skills needed to function in society, and the problem just becomes worse. I don't know what the number is now, but when I was inside, there were over 1 million people behind bars. That's not "on parole", that's the number behind bars. That's one out of every 300 people in the united states. I don't know what the cost is now, but when I was inside, it cost 30,000 per year to keep someone locked up. I think that for sex offenders and violent people like rapists, killers, and child molesters, the prison is the best solution. If you would only lock up THESE people, instead of non violent drug offenders, you would reduce the prison population tremendously. I bet if you look at the cost of the drug war and the cost of keeping these people locked up, including the lost taxes because they are not productive members of society, the cost would be far more than we've spent on the war in Iraq. There may even be enough money there to turn the economy around :)
Games without frontiers (Score:4, Interesting)
Why go to all that effort of targeting criminals? You could do like what the UK has done, install CCTV EVERYWHERE and make the entire country a virtual prison.
Speaking from my experience, it feels nice to get out of the UK on holiday. However, due to the number of cameras and them being everywhere everywhere, the UK really does feel like one large open prison when you return. So much for being a free country.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
The main problem is that when the offender walks off, no one reacts. In theory, police should be dispatched and nab him -- but that never happens. Not even "rarely", it's for all practical purposes "never". This makes the system just a costly joke.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Let the liberal, hippies castrate this until it won't "scar" the delicate souls of the inmates, limiting it to such a stupidity and rendering it completely incompetent -
Actually, you are much more likely to run into opposition from the prison-industrial complex, & they ain't liberal, but let's not let facts or common sense get in the way of a good rant.
Re:Only killing works (Score:5, Interesting)
> It is a sad fact that the ONLY rehabilitation that works
> on criminals is a bullet through the brain. Not a single
> other system has any noticable effect.
Well, not entirely true. Getting people out of the environments that lead them towards a criminal lifestyle tends to be pretty effective (aside from the seriously mentally ill, of course).
Prison, unfortunately, is the exact opposite of doing that.
A bullet through the brain, on the other hand, gets points for a cheap and effective after-the-fact approach.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Arguably, given the article you posted, it doesn't appear to be effective in the way it was presented, but I found a few points interesting.
This person gives no references for the statement claiming 'it doesn't work', nor does he compare it to the current incarceration method statistics and he doesn't present any statistics from typical prison based incarceration. He of course only speaks to and ask about the worst case scenarios (those that managed to get out of their collars, those that these private companies failed to monitor, or those that didn't get them in the first place), which of course gives him worse statistics than expected.
Last point that I noticed, the article said the companies could not supply him with any studies indicating that tagging was effective. The point being that they simply don't know if it's effective as no studies have been done to date, or they aren't aware of any. You interpreted that as "it doesn't work".
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:2, Interesting)
my objection is more about replacing simple solutions with complicated solutions that are harder to keep under control.
If someone goes to prison and stays there, the objective of stopping them from committing more offences is met for the duration of the imprisonment. The objective of punishing the person is also met. The objective of getting them back to a useful role in society is up to the offender.
If someone gets a portable GPS+torture bracelet as punishment, I don't see how the rest of the community is spared from the risk of immediate reprisals or further offences.
On top of that, it actually opens the door to vigilante-type initiatives. The neighbourhood watch (or the opposing gang) finds that someone is carrying the bracelet, take him on a van and just watch as he gets zapped by remote control. Not fun.
Indeed. It also does nothing to stop gang-related activities if the perpetrator is in charge. Even traditional prisons have had difficulty with this (See history of various Mafia bosses still running their "families" out of a prison cell) But not even incarcerating the boss leaves no chance at all of stopping them from running their "business". Let's face it, electric shock belt or not, it isn't much of a prison term if you are "confined" to your Miami Beach mansion as you send out hit men to kill the witnesses against you.
Prisons may not be perfect, but they are the best solution we have yet come up with.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:4, Interesting)
The device would have to unremovable (which requires sensitive anti-tamper cabling through it, with power on those cables), it would have to be able to do real time crypto (both for transmitting data, and for being able to answer to challenges, otherwise its messages could be replayed by a ground-based antenna while you wrap the original device in metal), it would have to be able to transmit over a fair distance, and perhaps through walls, and it would have to be able to 'sting' - presumably using electricity, and it would require a portable power-source to do all this.
And then you haven't dealt with the risk of 'no reception', or answered the question of 'where are we going to do location - by triangulation or GPS inside the device ?'.
I can tell you now, from experience, using current-day technology - that's not going to be a very 'portable' device.
Re:Yeah, Right... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I'd ask why prison isn't working that way now, when it once did work exactly that way. What has changed? Why can't prison work that way?
Nobody should be raped in prison. There should be no gangs in prison. There should be no contraband in prison.
I mentioned liberalism because HateBreeder did. I think he really means "progressivism". And progressive attitudes to prison have certainly brought reforms. Some of these have been good, but others have simply given more freedom to people who shouldn't have any freedom, with the result that people like me are afraid of the other prisoners and not at all afraid of the system itself. Which is totally backwards.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess the question is whether rehabilitation is even a reasonable objective in many cases? I think that sometimes the answer is yes, and if you can turn somebody around it certainly is a win/win. This should be pursued.
However, I see the main purpose of prison as deterrence. If there were no negative consequences for committing crimes, there would be a lot more criminals out there. If prison were a nice place to be, then perhaps more people would opt for prison as a lifestyle. As a result, prison HAS to be unpleasant. Punishment in itself is at least partially rehabilitative, since it gives people incentive to not end up back in prison again.
I'm not sure that preventing somebody from committing crime is a legitimate purpose of prison. Sure, it isn't a bad thing - especially if you think you can rehabilitate them.
Sometimes I wonder if we don't need something that is more of a dual-system. Prisons need to be generally less comfortable (less air conditioning/etc - no TV, etc - but not to a point where physical harm is a concern). Rehabilitation is also important - have classrooms where people can learn, as long as they make steady progress. Also, have "graduation standards" for prison - you can not leave prison until you can pass tests showing a high-school level of education and the ability to perform some kind of serious employment (such as a trade). Then criminals will have something to do once they get out.
At the same time, we do need to be careful to avoid giving people incentive to commit petty crimes with the hope of a free education if they lose a job. There is no reason these kinds of classes shouldn't be free to the community at large, actually.
The bottom line is that people should only be in prison if they cause serious harm to society (I'm all for sentencing reform as well, and stopping the drug war). As such, they're really at the mercy of society, and society should act in its own interest, and not the interest of the prisoners except where they coincide.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:4, Interesting)
Prisons may not be perfect, but they are the best solution we have yet come up with.
Yup, "yet". But maybe this is the time where we actually do come up with something better. It doesn't make sense to slap a bracelet on a mentally deranged serial killer, tell him "watch it, cause we're watching you" and send him back onto the street. But doing the same with a shoplifter might actually be better than putting him behind bars for a while, having him loose contact with the real world. He may not be able to to any harm while in prison, but when he gets out, chances are he's not thinking "wow, that really taught me something. I'll never do it again."
To quote George Jung in Blow [imdb.com]:
"Danbury wasn't a prison, it was a crime school. I got in with a Bachelor of marihuana, I got out with a Doctorate in cocaine."
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
I talked to one of those criminals that was in the work release program. He said that a large portion of his salary was being given to the prison system. I do not know exactly what portion, but was led to believe that it was more then half. Isn't this heading toward a system of slave labor.
I can understand the point of paying for your sins. However if the system is set up so that it is being fed by those sins will naturally accumulate w/o regard to reality. Cops generally acknowledge that if they pull you over, they 'CAN' find some moving infraction that you are in violation of.
Just think that a large percentage of the population in the U.S depends upon people sinning. Judges, lawyers, cops, prison officials, etc. When you throw money and privatized prisons into the mix, bad things happen. In some ways the criminal system is the best thing going for drug dealers. Without it they would not be making the insane cash they are. So the drug dealers and the enforces prop each other up.
Why is it that society feels comfortable with spending great gobs of money on enforcement, but hardly any on treatment. President Nixon was the only president to have spent more money on treatment then incarceration.
For the truly horrendous crimes there should be a summary execution. If society can't stomach that, they have not business being in the prison business.
Parent the only poster to get it (Score:3, Interesting)
The U.S. is rapidly becoming a two-tier society in terms of civil rights because of our desire to lock everyone up and the reality of being unable to do so (most of this is driven by the war and drugs and the secondary lawlessness caused by drugs).
First-tier citizens are those who have never been convicted of a felony.
Second-tier citizens are those who have been convicted of a felony and are either on long-term probation or parole or have served a long sentence. In most cases, these people lose most of their civil rights and cannot reclaim them without a difficult appeal process or a pardon.
I don't have a problem with convicted felons, serving their sentence in a prison or on parole losing their civil rights. Depending on the crime, some long-term probationary convicts, such as violent criminals, should probably have some of their rights curtailed (eg, buying a weapon) for the duration of their probationary period.
The problem is, though, that we're convicting these people on 10+ year sentences, often for violent crimes, and then after 18 months, we're letting them out on probation or parole and treating them like second class citizens forever. And then we wonder why unemployment is so high and why people don't feel part of the society as a whole.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't know that. Is that true? How do you know? (Are you a police officer or something?)
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
Being "hard on crime" causes crime. If drugs and prostitution were legal, regulated, and taxed everywhere in the USA, then the taxes would go down by a large amount. Over 50% of prisons are filled with people convicted of one of those, and most of the rest are funded by them as well. Prohibition didn't work the first time, but idiots like you who like to be tough on crime equate smoking a joint with brutal murderrape.
Oh, and it's a sad thing when our prisons are as bad as the third world prisons we like to make fun of. And even worse when people like you are apparently proud of that fact.
Re:Already used in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't see this being worse than the existing system under any scenario. In the existing system you automatically go to prison. In the new system you only end up prison if a whole chain of events go wrong.
* Obviously the "automated" justice won't be administered by ED 209 robots.
* All data uploaded obviously needs to be digitally signed by the device to prevent forgery or mistaken ID.
* The device could beep a warning if you're outside your allowed limits. eg. If your car breaks down it might beep and you get twenty minutes to get to a phone and explain yourself. Maybe even wait for a cop to pass by and check out your story.
* People making fake transmitters to fake being somewhere else probably isn't going to happen. If it does then random phone calls to check up on you will probably work. This cartoon [xkcd.com] seems appropriate.
* Use your imagination...
Remember: You're a criminal, the tag is there to limit your freedom. If you're tagged and getting repeated tagging violations you're doing it wrong...