“And you will wait …”: Carceral transportation in electronic monitoring as part of the punishment process
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Author | Gabriela Kirk,Erin Eife |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520941936 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
“And you will wait . . .”:
2021, Vol. 23(1) 69–87
! The Author(s) 2020
Carceral transportation
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520941936
in electronic monitoring
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
as part of the punishment
process
Erin Eife*
University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Gabriela Kirk*
Northwestern University, USA
Abstract
Electronic monitoring, often accompanied with house arrest, is used extensively across
the United States as a means of pretrial supervision and as a condition of probation and
parole. In this article, we bridge the literatures of procedural punishment and carceral
geography to detail how this previously understudied process of transport from jail to
electronic monitoring serves not just as a necessary bureaucratic process, but as a key
moment of punishment and power. Utilizing in-depth interviews with 60 people who
were currently or recently on EM in Cook County, IL, we argue that this moment of
transport is itself a punitive experience. We find that sheriff’s officers involved in the
transport process punish individuals through the manipulation of time and space, verbal
threats, and infantilization. This punishment in transport instills a subjugated status that
sets the tone for the EM experience, aiding in reinforcing the home as the new carceral
space.
Keywords
carceral geography, electronic monitoring, procedural punishment
*These authors contributed equally to this article.
Corresponding author:
Erin Eife, 1007 W. Harrison St, MC312, Chicago, IL 60607, USA.
Email: Eeife2@uic.edu
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Punishment & Society 23(1)
Introduction
Five minutes. That’s how long the drive to Jeff’s residence from the Cook County
Jail in Chicago takes on a typical evening. When Jeff was transported to his home
after being ordered to pretrial electronic monitoring (EM), however, the van ride
took 7 hours, from 10 pm at night until 5 am in the morning. Jeff described the
reason for the delays, “They would just purposely go really slow and drive weird
routes that didn’t make any sense to peoples’ houses.” EM, often accompanied
with house arrest, is used extensively across the country as a means of pretrial
supervision and as a condition of probation and parole (Gable and Gable, 2005).
Rather than being an anomaly, Jeff’s long, circuitous, and uncomfortable evening
ride home was typical for many of our respondents who were placed on pretrial
and probation EM. Scholars have become increasingly attentive to “carceral
circuitry,” or the processes and practices that circulate within and between carceral
spaces (Gill et al., 2016). Jeff’s case highlights the role of coerced mobility as a tool
for punishment and disorientation. When a person is moved without consent, the
experience is inherently carceral due to the loss of one’s autonomy and power
(Moran et al., 2017). In this article, we bridge the literatures of procedural pun-
ishment and carceral geography to detail how this previously understudied process
of transport from jail to electronic monitoring serves not just as a necessary
bureaucratic process, but as a key moment of punishment and power.
This article draws on the experience of carceral transport for 60 people in Cook
County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago and its immediate suburbs.
Respondents had been transported from Cook County Jail to their homes, where
they were confined under electronically monitored house arrest via a radio-
frequency ankle bracelet. This article explores the role this transport plays in the
punishment process and in the overall experience of EM. While EM serves to
explicitly remove individuals from institutionalized sites of confinement, we find
that this process of transportation works to reproduce and reinforce the dynamics
located within the walls of the jail, setting the tone and expectations for the expe-
rience of EM. For our respondents, this process was full of meaning and control
similar to other aspects of the carceral experience. Through interactions with
sheriff’s officers, this punishment in transport served to instruct and remind indi-
viduals on EM of their subjugated status. Officers exerted punishment through the
manipulation of time and space, the use of verbal threats, and the infantilization of
their passengers. Through highlighting the patterns of behavior commonly expe-
rienced by people in traditional forms of custody, we illustrate the ways in which
carceral logics of punishment and control operate outside of jails and prisons and
become embedded in routine, bureaucratic practices.
This article has three main contributions. First, we add to the ongoing
literature on procedural punishment and examinations of punishment beyond
formal sanctions (Feeley, 1979; J€aggi et al., 2016; Kohler-Hausmann, 2018).
Eife and Kirk
71
Previous literature considers how bureaucratic processes within the courtroom are
experienced as punitive, but far less has been made of the experience of punishment
during transport from jail to one’s home. Second, we build on carceral geography
scholarship, in particular its focus on mobilities (Turner and Peters, 2016), and
research on the manipulation of time and space (Armstrong, 2015; Auyero, 2012;
Conlon, 2011; Foucault, 1979) by adding empirical evidence to bolster the impor-
tance of examining these liminal spaces in meaning-making and the development
of carceral subjecthood. Third, we add to the community of scholars studying the
experience of EM by highlighting an under-examined moment of the experience
(Gacek, 2019; Gainey and Payne, 2000; Vanhaelemeesch et al., 2014). Our analysis
of this empirical example of transportation to EM brings these largely separate
literatures into conversation with each other.
Procedural punishment and manipulation of time
While the criminal legal system is thought to be most punitive during incarcera-
tion, punishment is a central piece of the system throughout. Scholarship on pro-
cedural punishment has detailed the ways in which the myriad of routines and
bureaucratic requirements of the court serve as punishment and social control,
outside of and often before the imposition of formal sanctions (Cadigan and
Kirk, 2020; Feeley, 1979; Gonzalez Van Cleve, 2016; Kohler-Hausmann, 2018).
These studies have typically focused on interactions within the courtroom itself.
However, individuals are increasingly required to meet other conditions of the
court system both pre- and post-conviction that are often viewed as outside of
their formal punishment such as paying bail or court costs, participating in pretrial
programming, and navigating other bureaucratic systems (Martin et al., 2018;
Scott-Hayward and Fradella, 2019). While EM is ordered by a judge, the logistical
requirement of transportinga person from jail to their EM residence is not a formal
mandate. In this article, we argue for the expansion of the procedural punishment
framework to include bureaucratic processes occurring outside of traditional crim-
inal legal settings, by using the case of EM transport.
Studies on procedural punishment, particularly those on the pretrial process,
have noted the importance of time and waiting, which is in line with broader
sociological work on the manipulation and control of time (Foucault, 1979;
May and Thrift, 2001; Moran, 2012). Scholars argue that the act of waiting is a
temporal process through which subordination is reproduced, particularly among
the poor and disadvantaged (Armstrong, 2015; Auyero, 2012; Conlon, 2011;
Gonzalez Van Cleve, 2016). This framing illuminates the ways in which monoto-
nous and uncertain aspects of the criminal legal system are inherently punitive. It is
through relational practices, such as being made to wait for unspecified amounts of
time, that the state defines and creates certain kinds of subjects and identities,
making clear who (or what) is in control (Auyero, 2012; Comfort, 2008).
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Carceral geography and electronic monitoring
While the subfield of carceral geography began by exploring the ways in which the
carceral state and carcerality are mapped across different fixed spatialities
(Gilmore, 2007), the literature has recently turned to explore moments of disci-
plined or coerced mobility which continue to map onto social and institutional
systems (Gill et al., 2016; Moran, et al., 2012; Turner and Peters, 2016). These
scholars argue that coerced mobility in all its forms has always been a part of
traditional incarceration, depicting EM as a continuation of these dynamics rather
than as a rupture (Gacek, 2019; Gill, 2016; Mincke, 2017). Conceptualizing
coerced mobility as an integral part of the punishment process brings to light
questions of power, agency, and embodiment to spaces both within and outside
of physical spaces of incarceration (Gacek, 2019; Moran, et al., 2012; Turner and
Peters, 2016). Previous scholarship calls for future research to “trace the ways in
which the techniques of the prison are disseminated to more diffuse carceral
forms” and to explore the lived experience of this carcerality (Moran et al.,
2017: 676). This paper is a direct response to this call. Transportation is one
such diffuse carceral form that has garnered significant attention, particularly
transport to one’s prison sentence or transport between prisons (Moran et al.,
2012; Turner and Peters, 2016). The unpredictability of this transport and its
often circuitous nature serve as performances and enactments of authority that
reinforce the identity of the prisoner as a subjugated body even...
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