Decrypting the gaze of electronic monitoring (EM): A comparative book review of Daems’ Electronic monitoring and Gacek's Portable prisons
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/26338076231173150 |
| Author | Carl Robert Berry |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Decrypting the gaze of
electronic monitoring (EM):
A comparative book review of
Daems’Electronic monitoring
and Gacek’sPortable prisons
Tom Daems, Electronic monitoring. Tagging offenders in a culture of surveillance.
Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020; 84 pp. ISBN: 978-3-030-
34038-4, €51,99 (hbk)
James Gacek, Portable prisons: Electronic monitoring and the creation of carceral
territory. Canada: McGill-Queens University Press, 2022; 200 pp. ISBN: 978-
0-2280-0828-6, $37.95CAD (pbk)
Reviewed by: Carl Robert Berry , University of the West of England –Frenchay Campus, UK
Date received: 2 April 2023; accepted: 13 April 2023
Introduction
Electronic monitoring (EM) is a highly recognisable yet contested penal sanction that employs
surveillance and spatial temporal control to enforce curfews. Due to EM’s rapidly transforming
and expanding inter-jurisdictional implementation, attempts at understanding this penal measure
have often been outpaced by a need to keep up with simple information (Hucklesby &
Holdsworth, 2016). Dramatic technological innovations have recently changed EM’sphysical
equipment and monitoring systems; however, concerns about how many, who and in what
stage of the justice process, have taken precedent. Agencies commission official research
seeking evaluations of whether EM works, while morepenetrating questions about its objectives
are left unanswered.Although very beneficial insights, deploying conceptssuch as telematics and
e-topiahavebeenmadebyluminarieslikeMikeNellis(2017),
1
sustained theoretical examina-
tions of EM, untilrecently, have been rare. Nevertheless, such theoreticalanalyses are important:
How can we ask whetherEM works, when (as is particularlythe case in my jurisdiction, England
and Wales) its penal objectives are unclear from a practical, let alone philosophical,perspective?
Furthermore, if those objectives were explicitly formulated, we could then critically evaluate
whether their purported aims match their actual use.
Two recent books, Tom Daems’Electronic monitoring: Tagging offenders in an age of sur-
veillance (2020) and James Gacek’sPortable prisons: Electronic monitoring and the creation
Book Review
Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 56(2-3) 359–367
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/26338076231173150
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