Abstract
In Portable Prisons, James Gacek explores how electronic monitoring (EM) may produce and reinforce a form of carceral territory outside of the prison walls. For Gacek, ‘soft’ punishments like EM extend carceral territory rather than providing a means of decarceration; instead, he argues that ‘EM is an alternative form of incarceration rather than an alternative to incarceration’ (p. 151, emphasis in original). As such, EM does more than simply move the locale of punishment from prison-to-home but rather it (re)constructs people's everyday living spaces, dictating and intensifying the social control they are subject to. In both intent and effect, therefore, Gacek implores readers to understand EM as a carceral practice, representative of the carceral state and its extended punitive reach.
Drawing on multi-disciplinary literature and concepts, Gacek critically examines how EM operates in the lives of both the monitored and those who monitor, providing parallels between how each experience—and interpret—space and power. One of the main findings regards how EM administers ‘strategies of responsibilization [that] produce self-monitoring carceral subjects’ (p. 82). This produces a paradox where, despite promoting choice and responsibility, the conditions of EM often conflict with the needs of individuals’ everyday lives. The state responsibilizes their freedom, holding them accountable for any wrongful decisions, but limits their autonomy to do so, requiring them to become ‘visible, knowable, and locatable’ at all times (p. 85). More generally, Gacek attempts to challenge the normalization of this form of surveillance, critiquing and resisting the ongoing culture of control that impacts those already pushed to the margins.
Portable Prisons is divided into seven chapters; the first three chapters provide the framing for the study, detailing the study itself, the existing body of literature and Gacek's framing of ‘carceral territory’. In Chapter 1, Gacek introduces his doctoral research on EM in Scotland as the subject of the book by first defining what EM is and how it operates, before outlining the cultural context for this research. Here, Gacek contrasts Scotland's traditionally more ‘progressive character’ (p. 10) and welfarist agenda with the administration of EM by private security company G4S (Guard 4 Securicor).
In Chapter 2, Gacek explores what carcerality means and/or looks like, and also how it feels and is experienced. To do so, he introduces concepts and findings from carceral geography and mobilities literature to provide a framing for understanding how power is operationalized to confine, detain and immobilize those subjected to EM. Here, Gacek emphasizes the need to focus on ‘what occurs during and in between movements’ (p. 32), moving beyond traditional, yet rigid, dichotomies. Instead, he asks readers to consider carceral spaces as those which ‘reach into, extent beyond, spill over, muddy’ and blur artificially constructed boundaries (p. 33).
One of the main contributions of Portable Prisons emerges in Chapter 3 where Gacek presents ‘carceral territory’ as a theoretical framework and analytical tool to understand the operationalization of EM. He defines carceral territory as ‘the mechanisms that strategically inscribe penal logics on social relations outside the prison, via coordination and management of movement, time, and space’ (p. 6). For Gacek, therefore, territory is ‘strategic, relational, and processual’, whereby access to things, places and people are strategically administered through the restriction of mobility, time and space (p. 5). In making this argument, Gacek attempts to geographically contextualize EM as a form of punishment, extending the current literature base to think about the carceral 'beyond the anchorage of the prison' (p. 75). Instead, readers are asked to consider how the carceral is (re)produced in everyday places and spaces.
The second half of the book (Chapters 4–6) draws upon empirical findings from ethnographic observations and interview data to further explore the concept of carceral territory. The first empirical chapter details Gacek's institutional ethnographic observations of the private company contracted to elicit EM services. In observing G4S Scotland's National Electronic Monitoring Centre, Gacek incorporates the perspectives of EM officers themselves, and their interpretations of the protocols, practices and procedures they conduct. In particular, employees of G4S described working under their own regimes of surveillance, wherein the monitoring centre was itself a form of carceral territory.
In Chapter 5, Gacek provides the ‘second layer’ of analysis through observing monitoring officers ‘on the ground’ (p. 90). By shadowing a single officer during ride-alongs, Gacek explores how EM equipment is ‘installed, deinstalled, and reinstalled’ in the homes of those subject to it (p. 16). Here, he describes how officers construct the individual's home as a carceral territory, ‘reifying the status and power of the carceral state and the deprived and disempowered nature of the offender’ (p. 97).
In the final empirical chapter (Chapter 6), Gacek details his findings from semi-structured interviews with 10 prisoners at HMP Edinburgh who had previously been under EM supervision. Here, Gacek examines how geographies of marginalization ‘connect people, punishment, and places and how carcerality manifests itself within and beyond these linkages’ (p. 139). That participants experienced EM as more ‘palatable’ than prison is because, Gacek suggests, EM ‘was packaged to be more palatable’ (p. 134), rather than being inherently so.
The triangulation of methodologies, and in particular, the use of ethnography to study EM—following users and operators between space and place—should be commended as it allows readers to follow and witness ‘how the carceral reaches into the everyday’ (p. 141). Doing so subsequently humanizes the carceral subjects under examination. While he is honest about the difficulties he faced in gaining access to the field site, Gacek completed just 26 hours of institutional ethnography, two car shifts with a single monitoring officer and 10 interviews. Structured as separate chapters with distinct methodologies, there are times where the analysis feels light, relying more so on the literature than the voices of participants and/or observations made. Having spent longer in the field, therefore, might have enabled a deeper and richer analysis of the findings, solidifying Gacek's claims even further. In addition, I would have liked to have seen greater interconnectedness of the findings chapters, placing observations and interviews into conversation with each other, expanding and/or contrasting points made in previous sections to enhance the overall argument.
The book's final chapter, Chapter 7, reviews the significance of the study and the contribution of a theory of ‘carceral territory’ when examining EM. In particular, Portable Prisons highlights how EM extends forms of confinement, (im)mobility and territory beyond traditional spaces of incarceration. Crucially, Gacek demonstrates how the carceral territory that is imposed by EM requires monitored persons and their loved ones to (re)structure their daily rhythms and routines as a result of the increased surveillance and restriction. In this final chapter, Gacek also reflects on the limits and possibilities of criminological studies in this field and questions whether investigating the spread of carcerality throughout society may also help to ‘reduce, resist, or halt’ it altogether (p. 155).
Overall, Gacek's book Portable Prisons offers an original and important contribution to our understanding of EM specifically and to the geography of incarceration more generally. Gacek raises the need for more scholarly attention to be paid to the sanction of EM and similar technologies, particularly when motivated by private interests, and implores the wider public to be ‘unsettle[d]’ (p. 22) by the normalization of expanding carceral technologies in our everyday life.