1 page you will evaluate the use of literature and problem statements in assigned journal articles in your discipline to understand what it means for a research study to be justif

Surveillance as casework: supervising domestic violence defendants with GPS technology

Peter R. Ibarra & Oren M. Gur & Edna Erez

Published online: 27 September 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Academic discussion about surveillance tends to emphasize its proliferation, ubiquity, and impact on society, while neglecting to consider the continued relevance of traditional approaches to human supervision, an oversight insofar as surveillance is organized through practices embedded in justice system-based casework. Drawing from a multi-site study of pretrial personnel utilizing global positioning system (GPS) technology for domestic violence cases in the U.S., a comparative analysis is offered to illustrate how the handling of a “problem population” varies across commu- nity corrections agencies as they implement surveillance regimes. In particular, the study finds that surveillance styles reflect whether an agency is directed toward crime control and risk management, providing treatment and assistance, or observing due process. These programmatic thrusts are expressed in how officers interact with offenders as cases, both directly and remotely. In contrast to the ambient monitoring of environments and populations through data-banking technologies, the interactive surveillance styles described in the present study highlight the role of casework in surveillance.

Introduction

Surveillance has become pervasive as information systems that document people’s quotidian activities have multiplied [49]. These systems collect steadily increasing streams of personal information that are stored in unevenly regulated, coordinated, and accessible data banks, to be tapped into on an “as needed” basis by market- and government-based actors.1 The assembly and retrieval of these digitized data reflect the institutionalization of surveillance as an ordinary and “ubiquitous” feature of

Crime Law Soc Change (2014) 62:417–444 DOI 10.1007/s10611-014-9536-4

1These data banks need not be remotely located; for example, “smart phones” provide veritable troves of banked data (cf. [69]).

P. R. Ibarra (*) :O. M. Gur : E. Erez Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 W. Harrison St., BSB 4022 (M/C 141), Chicago, IL 60607, USA e-mail: [email protected]

O. M. Gur Department of Criminal Justice, Pennsylvania State University, Abington College, Abington, PA 19001, USA

contemporary life [28]. Such ambient surveillance entails the kind of data collection and information management that occurs routinely, silently, and unobtrusively when, for example, visiting web sites, swiping ID cards upon entry to a secured facility, dialing telephone numbers, having one’s image captured on closed-circuit television (CCTV), carrying credit cards containing radio frequency (RF) ID tags, or using social media.2

A number of academic disciplines consider surveillance an object of inquiry; of interest to criminology is the penetration of surveillance technologies across all phases of the criminal justice process. These developments reflect broader trends in the growth of the “surveillant assemblage” [36], whereby surveillance has become increasingly democratized3 and embedded, i.e., “rhizomatic” ([36], p. 614, citing [18]). Key to understanding surveillance in United States criminal justice contexts is the idea of the case, for the fact that a person is a case means that surveillance becomes interactive, shaped less by its ubiquitous reach and more by the focused processes that organize, for example, supervision or investigation. Whereas ambient surveillance is faceless, dif- fuse, and operates impersonally, interactive surveillance is personified, focused, and pursued in response to a person’s status, identity, or actions.4 Interactive surveillance is purposeful and directed, characterized by unique practices—often including the use of face-to-face interaction—that yield information not necessarily digitized or searchable on demand or by algorithm. Interactive surveillance entails, minimally, interaction between a surveilling agent and an object of surveillance: a case. Rather than consti- tuting a bifurcated pairing, however, ambient and interactive surveillance can function symbiotically: exemplifying “function creep” ([17], passim) [48] (cf. [87]), i.e., the repurposing of technological tools and systems, innovations adopted by justice institu- tions appropriate extant surveillant data streams while also contributing to their growth.

Although electronic monitoring (EM) is a common basis for the surveillance of criminal justice populations in the U.S., scholarly investigation has focused on evalu- ating EM’s impact on various outcomes (e.g., desistance, compliance, recidivism) (e.g., [68, 64, 2]), rather than documenting the surveillance processes it engenders.5 The purpose of the current study is to examine “styles of surveillance” among community corrections officers using EM, employing a specific and comparative analysis (cf. [30])

2 Ambient surveillance emerges from the rise of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence (cf. [83]), which essentially document in digitized form an increasing range of human traces (“footprints”) and actions (current location, vehicular movements, economic transactions, interpersonal contacts, online behavior, etc.) (cf. [70, 81]). Ambient surveillance is distinguished from mass surveillance in that the latter is directed by the state, whereas the former encompasses both state- and market-based forms of surveillance. 3 Surveillance has become democratized as people increasingly have their lives and routine activities recorded, documented, tracked, and rendered into searchable databases, including socially powerful individuals who historically could use their status to shield themselves from bureaucratic organizations that might seek to monitor them (see [36], p. 618). 4 Because it works “silently,” ambient surveillance can be ignored, forgotten, and taken-for-granted, or become the subject of folklore, rumor, and speculation, and hence the object of collective action, such as when users of a smart phone application organize to protest changes in a social media company’s “privacy” policies [43]. By contrast, interactive surveillance is difficult to mobilize against politically insofar as those subject to it feel restricted in expressing their rights (e.g., to liberty, privacy), are unaware of their status as a case, or are deemed unsympathetic figures to “rally around.” Nevertheless, on an individual level, it is evident that resistance and sabotage may be practiced by those subjected to electronic surveillance. 5 There has also been extensive work examining how offenders experience the condition of being electron- ically monitored (e.g., [67, 38, 41, 23]).

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of how the tools of surveillance are integrated into local agendas and routines, variegated traditions and ideologies, and legal and extralegal considerations associated with social control and rule enforcement. Specifically, we examine how a “second generation” [52] EM technology—GPS—is implemented through interactive surveil- lance with domestic violence (DV) defendants in three U.S. jurisdictions. GPS tracking is an instructive technology for conceptualizing the distinction between interactive and ambient surveillance, for it targets a specific group—a set of cases—rather than a general population, and yet its constantly-banked data streams mimic the behavior of ambient forms.

The capabilities of technologies, including GPS tracking, do not describe or explain the practice of surveillance, either in general or as conducted by the criminal justice “system” (cf. [51]). Discussions of the “surveillance society” [50] often posit a unidimensionality to technology-based surveillance that is not supported empirically. According to David Lyon:

Surveillance today is often thought of only in technological terms. Technologies are indeed crucially important, but two important things must also be remem- bered: One, ‘human surveillance’ of a direct kind, unmediated by technology, still occurs and is often yoked with more technological kinds. Two, technological systems themselves are neither the cause nor the sum of what surveillance is today. We cannot simply read surveillance consequences off the capacities of each new system ([50], p. 6).

Surveillance technology acquires its “effects” from how it is used, but surveillance and technology are not coterminous. It is crucial to investigate how technologies are incorporated into the practice of surveillance, and not assume that any given technology is implemented identically by surveilling authorities or with the heterogeneous popu- lations brought under their purview. Paterson and Clamp [66] correctly note:

It is essential to understand surveillance technologies as social and policy con- structs where the function of the technology is determined by the environment in which it is utilized and experienced by the public. Technology manifests itself in different forms in different socio-political and cultural contexts. Therefore, new surveillance programmes must be understood as products of their environment; they are creations of the criminal justice agencies which have developed them and the offenders/victims who interact with the technology ([66], p. 53-4).

As new forms of technology appear, they are “constructed” as useful in responding to “problems” [77, 42] framed through local, instead of, or in addition to, national lenses, and incorporated into pre-existing justice infrastructures. In the current case, EM technology was adopted by courts’ pretrial services programs as a way of ameliorating a “problem” that prior means had been unable to effectively address: keeping DV victims “safe” from their alleged abusers pending adjudication and disposition of a criminal case. Yet, as illustrated below, surveillance technology has been implemented dissimilarly across jurisdictions.

We argue for a view of surveillance as casework (cf. [75]) embedded within interactive processes emerging from defendant-focused regimes of social control. The

Surveillance as casework: supervising domestic violence 419

ends of social control shape the styles of casework, and hence how surveillance is mobilized and experienced. Accordingly, the means and ends of social control should be identified in interpreting the organization and practice of surveillance. Characteristic styles of agency practice vary, highlighting the importance of describing and analyzing surveillant technologies in context. GPS tracking is not simply a mechanism for enforcing curfew and mobility restrictions on DV defendants; rather, its compliance- focused agenda is incorporated into the practice of interactive surveillance by pretrial officers who use GPS in accordance with the traditions in which they have been trained, as favored by the agencies where they are employed. These traditions animate and legitimize the varying approaches to, or “styles” of, interactive surveillance that are observed in action. Because these styles reflect varying methods and philosophies of community corrections, we first address how supervision has been conceptualized in the literature and review prior research on supervision utilizing EM technology, before examining interactive surveillance in three U.S.-based GPS for DV pretrial programs.

Literature review

Supervision styles and penological discourse

EM has been increasingly incorporated as a tool for managing the risks posed by offenders on conditional release, including those accused of DV. The use of partially incapacitative ([35], p. 48) conditional release during the pretrial period in the U.S. entails the creation of supervision programs structured as “probation-like alternatives” ([35], p. 12), fashioned on a casework model (e.g., [13], p. 31).6 The nature of pretrial supervision can be understood by drawing from concepts developed in the probation and parole literature, and by reference to currents in penological discourse that direct or comment on the handling of offenders by the justice system.

Discussions of supervision style in the context of probation and parole have historically centered on the extent to which an officer or agency is oriented toward “law enforcement” or “rehabilitation.” For Glaser [31], parole supervision entails some mix of control and assistance, the former including “surveillance”7 of the offender, and the latter including practices traditionally viewed as forms of “casework” [55] (cf. [4]). Similarly, for Klockars, probation officer styles of supervision are defined by whether they are oriented toward casework; in the typology he offers, only “synthetic” officers balance the “law enforcer” and “therapeutic agent” orientations ([46], p. 550-1) (cf. [57, 76]), albeit not without difficulty. Accounting for the importance of agency culture, Clear and Latessa demonstrate how a given agency’s “organizational philosophy” influences officers’ handling of ill-fitting “expectations” ([11], p. 452)—stemming from role conflict associated with the treatment versus control distinction (cf. [1])— whereby officers’ use of discretion reflects agency imperatives, rather than individual preferences.

6 These pretrial supervision programs emerged out of the “second generation” bail reform movements of the 1970s and 1980s ([34], p. 1556-8). 7 Glaser defines surveillance “as any act involving direct or indirect observation of the parolees’ activities to ascertain that they conform to supervision rules” ([31], p. 432).

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Drawing from and synthesizing the analyses of such writers as Foucault, Feeley and Simon, Garland, and Deleuze, Nellis [58] has identified “three inter-connected sets of [penological] discourses” ([15], p. 79): “managerial-surveillant,” “punitive-repressive,” and “humanistic-rehabilitative” ([58], p. 178). These discourses correspond with and ground distinctive practices and emphases—some influential at certain points while others fall out of favor—and hence are pertinent to understanding approaches observed at criminal justice agencies. The broad adoption of EM coalesced with the ascendance of managerial-surveillant discourse, the “new penology” (cf. [26, 9]), and the redirec- tion of community corrections toward reducing dangers that offender populations pose for the public, rather than their rehabilitation [7] (cf. [12]). Investigating the influence of “actuarialism,” Lynch’s [48] ethnographic study describes how, despite efforts by “regional and statewide managers” (p. 857) in California to organize parole practice in ways consonant with new penological emphases (e.g., handling of offenders in terms of their risk classification and “case plan”), officers approach supervision through traditional investigative techniques, conversational stratagems, and intuition gained during face-to-face interaction to determine who merits treatment as “dangerous.” Robinson [71] found that officers in England and Wales are “reluctant to forgo the traditional ‘relational basis’ of probation practice” (p. 14), viewing risk rationalization schemes as contrary to the “culture” in which they were trained. Lynch, Robinson, and others (e.g., [7]) highlight the continued importance of officers’ front-line practices and professional training and tradition, notwithstanding the penological discourses that may be promoted by others standing at some remove (e.g., management, policy makers, the public, social theorists).

Surveillance with electronic monitoring

Initially, upon EM’s emergence, scholars speculated about its implications for probation [27, 44, 25, 14] and its welfarist traditions (cf. [80])—at times with ominous undertones (see [27]). Thus, Erwin [25] suggested that EM might lead to “a fascination with the technologies of enforcement” ([25], p. 66), supplanting probation’s traditional focus on constructively changing individuals. The “complex analysis required of the treatment model” ([14], p. 408)—reliant on “higher-order skills (interpersonal communications, personality assessment, diagnostic protocols, crisis intervention, substance abuse assess- ment and referral)” (p. 408)—would be displaced, cementing the “secondary” position of the rehabilitative model in relation to control ([14], p. 407, citing [10]). The “panacea” of EM ([14], p. 399; cf. [52]) threatened to promote supervision styles more reliant on the mechanical collection of “facts”—as emphasized by EM’s capacity to regularly bank and afford access to quantified information about clients—and less on casework and human interaction. EM promised to reduce “anxiety and guesswork endemic to the casework approach” ([14], p. 408) in favor of a surveillance-based regimewhose officers have “responsibilities akin to those of a clerk/technician” ([14], p. 408).

While studies of how officers monitor offenders with EM have been scant, research from England and Wales [39, 45, 65] and the U.S. [40] highlights the importance of the institutional context within which EM-based surveillance is practiced. EM in England and Wales is predominantly administered by a mixture of privately contracted moni- toring companies (e.g., G4S, Serco), sometimes with the involvement of state- sponsored justice agencies (i.e., the English Probation Service) (cf. [32]); in the U.S.

Surveillance as casework: supervising domestic violence 421

it is typically8 embedded within traditional criminal justice professions operating at local, state, and federal levels. Probation staff and sheriff’s deputies are justice profes- sionals, rather than technicians of a private company: the former are fully nested within agencies functioning under state mandate (e.g., courts, police departments, and com- munity corrections), providing sources of training, tradition, career advancement, job security, fraternity, professional identity, and infrastructure (e.g., sworn law enforce- ment as professional peers or colleagues) not readily available to the latter, i.e., those contracted as private-sector employees (see [39], p. 62).9

The England and Wales-based research examines how privately contracted field monitoring officers (FMOs)10 surveil offenders while demonstrating an abiding concern for the “bottom line.” “The work undertaken by [FMOs] in principal is the same nationwide” ([45], p. 582; cf. [32]): They are focused on observing the terms of “strict contracts” ([39], p. 62) that specify “performance targets” ([65], p. 317), while facing “financial consequences” ([39], p. 62) if they fail to meet them. Aside from verifying curfew compliance, 11 FMOs trouble-shoot technical problems, relay information to inductees, handle installation and de-installation procedures, and conduct “tamper inves- tigations” ([45], p. 583; [39, 65]). Companies can be penalized if officers do not respond to alerts quickly enough, respond to toomany curfew violations, or take too long to install equipment or submit documentation.12 Given these benchmarks, offenders do not receive a long-term focus or forms of support from officers ([65], p. 321). Rather, FMOs administer “punishments imposed by the courts” in a role organizationally defined as being “about ‘control’ rather than ‘care’” ([39], p. 60). Unlike a traditional criminal justice organization, which models approaches its employees should adopt, none of the officers’ “working credos” [39] (cf. [73])—encompassed through contrastive terms that mirror somewhat the styles of probation/parole supervision documented in the litera- ture—appear to be endorsed by the private company. “Credos” seem to function as individual preferences, perhaps because much of the “working life” [39] of FMOs is colored by management of personal fear and risk,13 rendering the organization’s imper- atives less consequential while raising questions about the infrastructure and support provided to FMOs.

8 Approximately ten states use private probation (for-profit and non-profit) to supplement state-run probation services, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah. These agencies are entrusted with supervising misdemeanants and low-risk offenders [74]. Stillman [78] offers an in-depth journalistic account of the private probation industry in the U.S. 9 See the article by Nellis (this issue) [61] for a historical account of the relationship between EM and probation in England and Wales. 10 Hucklesby’s sample of privately-contracted FMOs (N=20) had worked in retail, office, and factory settings, in the security industry, as cable television installers, or served in the armed forces ([39], p. 63). Paterson’s [65] sample includes a mix of privately contracted FMOs, as well as staff employed in state-based agencies (e.g., probation officers), but systematic comparisons between the two groups’ supervision practices are not made. 11 Information about curfew compliance is forwarded to a central monitoring service, “where it is acted upon,” but it is not clear by whom or how ([45], p. 582). 12 Such tracking of the FMO’s working practices implies that FMOs are surveilled as much as they surveil, a point that Paterson [65] explores in some depth. 13 Hucklesby describes officers who skirt threats in the field by avoiding assigned areas ([39], p. 69), misrepresenting the auspices of their home visits, minimizing their authority to offenders, aborting visits prematurely, and sidestepping confrontation ([39], p. 70). The company's policy—stating that “if monitoring officers felt unsafe before or during a visit they were not required to complete it and simply had to inform managers of their decision” ([39], p. 69)—presumably encouraged such an orientation.

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In a fieldwork-based account (see [40], p. 34) of a pretrial supervision program in a Midwestern U.S. county’s probation department, Ibarra [40] examines how EM is deployed in the context of DV cases to deter defendants from contacting an estranged partner. Ibarra explicates how EM is embedded amidst a series of liberty restrictions.14 Compliance is documented by monitor- ing records that, along with the immediate arrest report, arrest history, and information provided by the victim, constitute an assemblage of tools used to construct a client’s “risk horizons” ([40], p. 46)—i.e., the officer’s emergent sense of the range of dangers a client poses to a victim, himself, or others (e.g., children, pets). Reminiscent of Emerson’s [17] term “remedial horizons,” as used by Ibarra [40], the risk horizons are in play and constantly changing based on the officer’s reading of converging data streams. “Red flags” are signals to the officer that a defendant merits close scrutiny, while “trigger control” involves prospectively anticipating and managing the defendant’s thoughts and feelings to ensure he remains actively deterred from harming the alleged victim [40]. As officers “work the case,” red flags are not strictly, or even mainly, derived from the RF-based EM records (including logs registering curfew- related behaviors, and tamper alerts), or risk classification. 15 Rather, and consistent with Lynch’s study of parole officers [48], Ibarra ([40], p. 40) finds that, beginning with the initial intake meeting (cf. [46], p. 553; [79], p. 42), officers identify red flags by interacting strategically with supervisees, attending to what defendants reveal (intentionally and inadvertently) about their doings and states of mind, noting whether defendants dissemble, are evasive or overly- friendly, try to direct the conversation, or resist their authority.16 By contrast, trigger control can involve encouraging the offender to take up certain pursuits, or altering the defendant’s living environment so that presumably noxious influences are limited or removed (e.g., requiring that a defendant with a history of substance use relocate from a neighborhood with high drug activity). 17 The organization of casework around red flags and trigger control suggests that officers view surveillance technology as an insufficient means of deterrence or source of insight into a defendant’s mentality.

14 Inductees were prohibited from communicating with the victim and approaching the victim’s residence, and faced a number of probation-like constraints and obligations. 15 From the perspective of the risk horizon, a risk assessment score is but one seemingly static albeit validated data point among the many information streams that a community corrections officer can consider. Risk assessment generally pertains to placement and programming, and scores do not incorporate emergent information; the risk a client poses is constructed as being more or less “static.” Constraints on defendants are based on a prediction about what they are “likely” to do (e.g., abscond, reoffend, violate court orders), and result in the offender being placed into a (a) program designed to receive “high” (or “low”) risk clients [37], (b) risk-graded version of a program [72], or (c) judge-customized regime ([82], p. 11). See Lynch [48] and Bullock [7] for an examination of the role of risk classification in the work of parole and probation officers, respectively. 16 For example, “Clients who seem inclined to ‘test’ rules, or who seem prepared to challenge the PO's [probation officer’s] right to enforce them, stand out and are easily discerned by the PO in interaction, both because of their non-deferential manner as well as their gripes about various program elements” ([40], p. 40). The officer will tend to think that the defendant “is up to something,” and subject them to “surprise” home visits. 17 The approach echoes the strategy described as “environmental corrections” [16].

Surveillance as casework: supervising domestic violence 423

The current framework

Surveillance with, and without, supervision

Surveillance and supervision—as reviewed above—have varying degrees of intercon- nection in the work of EM officers. Surveillance-without-supervision is less informed by data stream discoveries, including those emerging from one-on-one encounters with surveilled persons. Such “surveillance” is atomistic: episodic, passive, non-cumulative, and fragmentary. Thus, the FMOs described in the England- and Wales-based research seem unaware of why an offender has been “tagged” or subjected to curfew, and the possible import of what they observe of an offender’s actions or environment. 18

Supervision-informed surveillance (i.e., surveillance-with-supervision), by contrast, is characterized by recursivity, i.e., an officer’s engagement with data streams that productively shape the ongoing “working of a case.” Such practice is predicated on a holistic grasp of each person as having a particular biography, offense history, person- ality, set of needs, or complex of risks. When an individual is not a mere “data double” [36], but comprehended through a variety of sources, surveillance enables insight into a person’s issues and challenges, and thus can extend the agency’s emphasis on “control” or “care” ([39], p. 61). Ibarra [40] shows that a surveillance approach predicated on recursivity entails using accumulating information about a given subject to iteratively direct how surveillance proceeds; as bits and details about the defendant (and victim) are pieced together from personal encounters and technologically-mediated sources (E- mail and text messages, urine screens, monitoring logs, etc.), the officer crafts strategies to work the case. In such circumstances,

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