Digitalising corrections

Introduction

Prison, parole, and probation agencies are witnessing the introduction of a range of digital technologies to deliver services to people in custody, support practitioners, and create new forms of surveillance and social control. In some jurisdictions, devices like secure tablets and laptops are increasingly becoming a standard element in prison design. Video telephony is widely used within prisons to facilitate visitation, tele-psychology, tele-psychiatry, tele-legal, and tele-health support. A range of digital technologies – from e-health applications to learning management systems and virtual reality programmes – are being introduced to prison and probation environments as modes of mental health, forensic treatment, re-entry, and alcohol and drug support programme delivery (Ross et al., 2023b). And in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies played a significant role in allowing prison and probation agencies to rapidly adapt their service delivery models to minimise person-to-person contact.

This special issue of the Journal of Criminology examines how this digital transformation is shaping prison and probation services, and what needs to be done to ensure that these developments yield beneficial outcomes for all those involved. We are particularly concerned with examining the values, theories, policies, and design principles that shape how services are translated into digital forms, and how, in turn, these services generate benefits and harms experienced by users. We are also interested in how technologies adopted as specific solutions to immediate problems can rapidly bring about more fundamental changes in operating systems and practices. Our goal is to speak to both academics and practitioners by presenting articles that are grounded in theory and evidence, but where the implications of the research are readily accessible to non-academic readers.

It is evident that the digital transformation in this space is underway, but it takes distinctly different forms in different jurisdictions, and its overall direction remains unclear. A key transition point was the adoption of digital solutions to many of the service delivery challenges that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic (Brennan, 2020; Carr, 2021; Jackson et al., 2021). This shift was important not so much because of the technology developments involved – most of the platforms adopted during the pandemic were standard digital tools like videoconferencing, text messaging, or eLearning applications – but rather because the experience of adopting digital technology ameliorated some of the cultural and administrative barriers that had hitherto constrained its uptake, and showed that the risks and technical challenges involved were manageable. Beyond the specific digital responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, the transformation of corrections proceeds by multiple pathways. A small number of jurisdictions have established detailed strategies to make a wide range of digital tools and services available across multiple sites. More often, digital technologies are adopted as ad hoc solutions to immediate problems without much consideration of the wider ethical, regulatory, and practice issues that were involved (Knight & Van De Steene, 2020; UNICRI, 2024).

In this regard, the digitalisation of corrections mirrors the problems and opportunities that are present in the wider digital transformation of government and society. This special issue is an opportunity to examine some of these issues and ask what the digitalisation of corrections means in criminological terms. Like the wider digital transformation of government and society, the digitisation of corrections not only brings with it opportunities to improve the quality and accessibility of educational, rehabilitative, and other services and create innovative solutions to long-standing problems, but also involves some profound risks and harms (Wood, 2022).

A criminology of digital corrections

The digitalisation of corrections is at the intersection of several distinct domains of digital development: e-government (i.e., the digital transformation of government services and governmentality), e-health and eLearning, surveillance technologies, and the privatisation of correctional services. Thus, examining the values, theories, policies, and design principles that shape correctional digitalisation requires that we take an expansive view of theory, ethics, and practice. To date, digital criminology has had comparatively limited engagement with issues outside a few select areas, namely cybercrime, digital surveillance, and social media. In this regard, we echo Stratton, Powell, and Cameron's (2017) call for a more interdisciplinary approach to digital criminology that engages with social, critical, and technological theory. We see technology not as simply a means or instrument we use, nor as a mere extension of our capabilities, but as a mediator. Technology mediates action, perception, experience, and social relations (Verbeek, 2005), shapes institutional culture, and contributes to (techno-)moral revolutions and other large-scale societal changes (Hopster et al., 2022).

The problem of interdisciplinarity manifests in a variety of ways. At a prosaic level, as editors we encountered it in the difficulty in finding reviewers for submitted articles. Despite the burgeoning growth of digital criminology (Smith et al., 2017), relatively few scholars to date have taken its interdisciplinary approach to addressing prison digitalisation. More significantly, many of the digital developments we observe in corrections are informed by a limited theoretical and practice perspective. However, as several of the contributions to this special issue demonstrate, there are also attempts on the part of some correctional jurisdictions to develop digital strategies that are interdisciplinary, rights-based, and involve participatory decision making.

The digitisation of corrections has the potential to catalyse profound transformations in the delivery and experience of correctional services. While promising benefits such as enhanced access to services, normalisation of prison regimes, and more targeted interventions, it is also imperative to acknowledge the potential risks and ethical implications inherent in this digital transition. Enhanced surveillance capabilities and the risk of creating more impersonal and alienating prison environments underscore the critical importance of rigorous examination and thoughtful deliberation in the implementation of digital technologies within corrections (see Hofinger & Pflegerl, 2024). By confronting these issues through an interdisciplinary lens, criminologists and allied scholars can contribute to the development of ethical, equitable, and effective approaches to digitising corrections that prioritise the well-being and rights of incarcerated individuals while promoting public safety and rehabilitation (see Reisdorf & Rikard, 2018).

Echoing other recent work in digital criminology that has foregrounded the techno-sociality of criminalised behaviours and criminal justice processes (see McKay, 2020; Wood et al., 2023), the contributions to this special issue examine how digital technologies mediate social relations, experiences, and behaviours within correctional environments. In doing so, they contribute to the development of a more fulsome criminology of digital developments in corrections that addresses three central issues: (a) the processes that drive and shape correctional digitalisation; (b) the implications that the adoption of digital ways of working and delivering services have for correctional practices and regimes; and (c) the ethical and regulatory implications of the digital transformation of corrections.

To understand these complexities, several conceptual tools are needed. Notably, in examining prison digitalisation and the impact of digital technologies on correctional practices and environments, we need to avoid two diametrically opposed determinisms: a technological determinism that views technologies as the sole underlying cause of social behaviour and change and a social determinism that views all human behaviour as determined by social interactions and practices. Both technological determinism and social determinism are reductionist. The former reduces the causes of social change to technology and the latter to social interactions and practices.

Notably, social determinists do not accord technologies any causative power in shaping – without outright determining – social change (Wood, 2022). For this reason, they provide us little latitude for examining the impacts introducing technologies into correctional spaces and practices can have on social relationships, behaviour, and the experiences of staff and justice-involved people. Technology, here, is often treated as a neutral tool that is neither value-laden in its design, nor capable of co-producing intended, unintended, or unanticipated impacts on its users, institutions, or larger social structures and systems.

By contrast, technological determinists inject no causal power in social practices nor human intentionality. In doing so, they fail to address the social, cultural, and institutional contexts that shape how technologies are used, and, consequently, the impacts they in turn will have on these contexts. Technological determinism can, it must be noted, take several forms (Wyatt, 2008). For example, the technological pessimist, such as Jacques Ellul (2021), views technology as developing independent of social interests and concerns and in a manner that is not conducive to serving human (or ecological) flourishing. However, it is a second form of technological determinism, technological solutionism, that we should be particularly attuned to in discussions about prison digitalisation and the adoption of new technologies within corrections and community corrections agencies.

Avoiding solutionism

Technological solutionism is the belief that every social problem can be “solved” using technological means (Fox, 1963, p. 2; Morozov, 2013). To embrace techno-solutionism is to treat complex social problems as issues that can readily be remedied using the latest gadget or innovation. Lost in the solutionist's technological optimism are the often-intractable structural factors that produce the issues capturing their attention. When we adopt the techno-solutionist's view that a techno fix can be developed for every social problem, the need for any form of structural reform dissipates. Often, too, solutionism identifies “solutions” for issues that may very well not represent problems in the first place or may represent the wrong problems to address. Missing from the technocratic and techno-determinist mindset of solutionism are institutional-critical questions that ask why an issue has been identified as a problem in the first place, and normative questions that ask whether we should be addressing this issue (Loader & Sparks, 2013).

In the corrections space, technological solutionism can be found in the marketing of software developers who present their latest wares as a “solution” to monitoring and reintegrating returned citizens and ensuring compliance with parole conditions. These goals may be laudable. But they are also goals that cannot be achieved through purely technological means, let alone through introducing a single new techno-fix into the morass of technological and social interdependencies we navigate. In turn, the solution can then become part of the problem in rendering a harmful system or problem more efficient.

This highlights one of the key issues with solutionism and its endless stream of techno-fixes. What techno-fixes usually do is increase the efficiency of existing systems and processes. Yet the designers and advocates of these fixes do not reflect on the values, practices, and the very problem they are being developed to “resolve”. When we fall back on technological solutionism, we stop questioning whether the problem being addressed by technology is a symptom of a larger problem rather than the issue that needs solving itself. Nor do we examine whether, in addressing one problem we are exacerbating another.

To qualify, we are not against implementing new technological innovations in correctional environments. What we want to flag is the potential for scholars and policy makers to get swept away with the tide of digitalisation and stop asking critical questions about the problems technologies are being posed as solutions to, whether digital innovations are actually the answer to these problems, and whether focusing on technology in fact occludes more pressing discussions about the current landscape of carceral systems.

Also occluded in techno-solutionism are questions of culture and context. In presupposing a form of technological determinism, techno-solutionism ignores the local contexts in which technologies are designed and implemented. Rather than asking difficult questions about uptake and engagement with technologies (Ross, 2018; Ross et al., 2022), solutionists hold fast to the belief that, once a new technology has been parachuted into a prison, the centre's organisational culture and cultural milieu will simply adapt to it.

There are many things we can do to avoid technological solutionism, but one of the most simple and important is to properly interrogate what technology is. When we shift from viewing technology not as a main instrument or extension but rather as a fully-fledged mediator of perceptions, actions, and social relations, we are less likely to fall into the trap of treating new digital innovations as techno-fixes. Instead, we should be primed to ask about the unintended, though often anticipated consequences and harms of the technologies we are analysing (see Wood & Warren, 2022). Understanding technology as a mediator also primes us to consider the use contexts of the technologies we examine, that is, the socio-cultural environments that shape how an artefact is received and how it mediates perceptions, social relations, and actions in practice (Verbeek, 2006). These contexts of use are almost entirely absent from the accounts of technological solutionists and other technological determinists, for they believe that an artefact's impact upon the social world will be uniform: the artefact shapes society, society in no way shapes the artefact.

One key form of technological mediation for a criminology of digital corrections to consider is that of user engagement, a key concept in human–computer interaction (O’Brien, 2016), albeit a concept that is parameters remain contested. Central to the concept of user engagement, however, is the quality of individuals’ experiences using a technology (O’Brien & Toms, 2008). The incorporation of digital service delivery applications within corrections and community corrections agencies requires us to consider the issue of user engagement as a potential co-producer of programme engagement. Speaking specifically about e-health applications, Alkhaldi et al. (2017) note that “engagement with digital health interventions (DHIs) may be regarded as a prerequisite for the intervention to achieve positive health or behaviour change outcomes”. While the challenges to fostering engagement with digital health interventions have now been examined in some depth, the specific challenges associated with fostering engagement with forensic mental health and behaviour change applications have not received the same level of research attention (see Ross et al., 2022).

Processes that drive and shape correctional digitalisation

A second crucial context that the concept of technological mediation leads us to consider is the context of design (Verbeek, 2006). How are the technologies utilised within correctional settings designed, and who has a role in designing them? What values are inscribed into the technology and whose values are these? In their contribution to this issue, Morris and Johns emphasise the unique insights that individuals with lived experiences bring to the design and use of digital tools in the justice system, serving as a crucial safeguard against underlying harms. They posit that when justice technologies are exclusively designed, deployed, and evaluated by individuals devoid of direct experience with the complexities of criminalisation and state punishment, a disconnect ensues. Recognition of this disparity is gradually permeating justice system decision-making circles, heralding a newfound appreciation for incorporating “service user” knowledge and perspectives. The utilisation of co-production methodologies in prison and probation settings, as evidenced in England and Wales, exemplifies this evolving paradigm. Drawing on the notion of co-production as collaborative “working-making-doing together”, Morris and Johns interrogate the potential risks of digital technologies perpetuating coercive aspects of the justice system. Central to their argument is the advocacy for the conscientious inclusion of individuals with “lived experience” of criminalisation in all in phases of technology development – design, implementation, and evaluation – as a means of mitigating such risks.

Beyond scrutinising the design of digital justice tools, is paramount to also interrogate the wider processes driving the digitalisation of corrections agencies – an inquiry tackled by several contributors to this special issue. The goals of correctional agencies are, of course, far from the only factor driving corrections and community corrections agencies’ adoption of digital technologies. Research has identified a variety of factors that shape both the adoption of digital technologies by corrections agencies, and the rules and procedures governing their use within institutions. These factors institutional buy-in (Link & Reece, 2021), the organisational structure of specific agencies (Link & Reece, 2021), logistical and security concerns (Davies et al., 2017; Reisdorf & Jewkes, 2016), cultural attitudes towards punishment (Taugerbeck et al., 2019), and the impact of the COVID-19 response on technology-update (Daffern et al., 2021).

In their contribution to this issue, Ross, Wood, Baird, and Lundberg examine the challenges entailed in designing and implementing digital service delivery technologies for correctional services. Their research highlights a variety of hurdles confronted by software developers and stakeholders engaged in the design process. Central to these challenges is the prevailing institutional culture within correctional agencies – a composite of values, tacit knowledge, and artefacts that profoundly influence the attitudes and behaviours of correctional staff. The introduction of novel digital technologies into these environments carries the potential to disrupt established roles and practices, often triggering resistance and rejection if incongruent with the existing organisational ethos. Additionally, collaborations between public and private sectors in developing digital service delivery technologies encounter obstacles rooted in government bureaucracy and risk aversion. Correctional agencies, driven by operational needs and risk management priorities, may exhibit hesitance towards embracing innovation and prioritising rehabilitation.

While the institutional culture of correctional agencies historically posed a barrier to digitalisation, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed a seismic shift in this landscape (Ross et al., 2023a). The pandemic served as a potent catalyst, compelling rapid adoption of digital solutions to mitigate operational disruptions. In their contribution to this issue McKay and Macintosh argue that the pandemic-induced adaptations, such as remote hearings and visits, are being perpetuated under the guise of post-pandemic “successes”, potentially signalling a future characterised by heightened reliance on digital communication channels. This evolution raises pertinent questions regarding the ramifications for human contact during legal proceedings and family visits within correctional settings. Similarly, Antojado and Ryan (this issue) aptly capture the ongoing discourse surrounding the post-pandemic “new normal” and its implications for correctional digitalisation. As organisations reassess their COVID-19 policies, deliberations ensue regarding the continuation of digital technologies facilitating video visits for incarcerated individuals and their families.

Implications of digitalisation for correctional practices and regimes

A focus on technological mediation also encourages us to examine the implications of digitalising correctional practices and regimes. The landscape of correctional practices and regimes is dynamic, evolving significantly in recent years due to technological advances such as privatisation, risk assessment, and sensor-based security. Digital technology, in particular, holds the potential to reshape the nature of custodial, supervision, and rehabilitative regimes within correctional facilities. One notable implication of correctional digitalisation is the shift from staff-mediated interactions to more direct service interactions, alongside the emergence of more individualised, and virtual services. This transformation has profound implications for the daily operations and interactions within correctional settings, influencing the dynamics between incarcerated individuals and correctional staff (Robberechs & Beyens, 2020).

The contributions to this special issue examine a range of implications arising from the digitalisation of correctional practices and regimes. McKay and Macintosh offer a nuanced exploration of the concept of “digital vulnerability” among incarcerated individuals. Their study delves into the intersection of individual vulnerabilities, structural inequities, and systemic dynamics with the utilisation of remote communication technologies within prisons. They draw attention to the digital inequalities that may either be exacerbated or mitigated by correctional digitalisation, emphasising the imperative of addressing these vulnerabilities to ensure equitable access to digital resources for all incarcerated individuals.

Järveläinen and Rantanen (this issue) provide insights into the implementation of digital technologies within the context of a women's prison in Finland, focusing on the principle of normalisation and its realisation through the adoption of information and communications technologies (ICTs). Through ethnographic fieldwork and research interviews with prison employees and incarcerated women, Järveläinen and Rantanen highlight the multifaceted impact of ICT adoption on internal communication dynamics and service provision within the prison. Despite efforts to promote diversified communication channels through ICT adoption, challenges emerge due to the persistence of security-oriented cultures and passive resistance among supervision employees. Their contribution underscores the long-term nature of the process of ICT adoption within correctional settings, which necessitates an overhaul of practices, cultures, and policies to prioritise rehabilitation while addressing security concerns.

Another perspective on the problems that arise from digitalisation is provided by Peplow and Phillips (this issue) who analyse the interactional structures of in-person and remote parole hearings, revealing differences that may influence the efficacy and perceived fairness of the parole process. Their conversation analysis of parole hearing, reveals that remote hearings are statistically associated with a higher prevalence of communication problems, as evidenced by instances of repair work from participants. This underscores the importance of effective communication in remote hearings to ensure the active participation and perceived legitimacy of incarcerated individuals in the parole process, and highlights critical considerations for implementing remote communication technologies in correctional settings. Through their analysis, Peplow and Phillips contribute valuable insights into the complexities of conducting remote parole hearings and the need to ensure procedural fairness and effective communication in remote justice proceedings.

A key implementation issue is how differences in prison regimes and treatment settings influence how digital interventions are experienced and the outcomes that are generated. In their contribution to this issue, Elison-Davies, Davies, Ward, Pittard and Judge present findings from a study on the implementation of a digital cognitive-behavioural therapy programme for substance misuse within prison settings in the United Kingdom and United States. Their research highlights the potential of confidential digital interventions to reduce stigma and enhance engagement among incarcerated individuals, leading to significant improvements in clinical outcomes. Through a comparative analysis of baseline measures and clinical outcomes between United Kingdom and United States prison residents engaged with Breaking Free, notable differences emerge. The United Kingdom cohort, benefiting from staff support during programme use, demonstrates higher levels of engagement compared to their U.S. counterparts. Additionally, the study identifies discrepancies in clinical complexity between the two groups, with the United Kingdom cohort exhibiting greater complexity. Elison-Davies et al.'s findings underscore the significance of delivery models in influencing engagement levels and clinical outcomes within correctional settings. Furthermore, they provide valuable insights into the interaction between delivery approaches and incarcerated individuals’ characteristics, paving the way for tailored interventions to enhance treatment effectiveness and address the multifaceted needs of incarcerated populations.

Ethical and regulatory issues

These issues cannot be understood in isolation from broader political and cultural challenges that shape the landscape of carceral policies (see Taugerbeck et al., 2019). Prison digitalisation does not occur in a vacuum. Like many other facets of criminal justice policy, the extent to which corrections and community corrections adopt particular digital service-delivery technologies is shaped by cultural attitudes towards punishment, justice, and the pains of imprisonment. This issue is particularly salient when we consider incarcerated individuals’ digital participation (Reisdorf, 2023). Jewkes and Johnston (2009) argue that contemporary measures to deny prisoners the means to communicate to individuals beyond the prison represent a continuity with Victorian and Edwardian prison regimes. Denying or restricting prisoners’ access to computer-mediated communication technologies, makes many prisoners believe that they are “second-class citizens in the Information Age”, Jewkes and Johnston (2009, p. 132) argue.

In addressing the ethical and regulatory dimensions of digitising correctional facilities, Knight and Van De Steene (2020) contribute valuable insights. Knight and Van De Steene (2020) highlight several key moral drivers for employing new digital technologies in carceral contexts. Firstly, they assert that access to technology is not merely a privilege but a fundamental human right, particularly in domains such as education and training, which are crucial for inmate rehabilitation during incarceration. Secondly, Knight and Van De Steene emphasise the normalisation of technology in modern society, arguing that denying prisoners access to digital tools exacerbates social disparities and impedes their full integration into society upon release. Moreover, they caution against the harmful consequences of depriving inmates of digital technology, citing the heightened risk of isolation, self-harm, violence, and suicide in such circumstances. Lastly, they advocate for the restorative potential of digital technology, particularly in addressing health and education-related criminogenic factors (see Reisdorf & Rikard, 2018). By providing e-learning and e-health services, they contend, prisons can facilitate rehabilitation and successful re-entry into the community, thereby contributing to broader societal goals of reducing recidivism and promoting public safety.

Antojado and Ryan (this issue) draw from the lead author's firsthand experiences of incarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic to examine the current landscape, evolution, and envisioned future of prison visits, with a particular focus on the transition from traditional visitation models to an increasingly digital format. Antojado and Ryan identify two significant challenges concerning video visits in Australian prisons: the privacy of incarcerated individuals and the issue of microaggressions from prison officers. These challenges raise ethical concerns regarding the implementation of video visits and necessitate careful policy development and execution. While acknowledging the benefits of video visitation in fostering familial connections, Antojado and Ryan emphasise that addressing legal implications and advocating for regulatory amendments is imperative. Morover, they advocate for laws delineating expectations regarding the use of video visitation technologies, monitoring protocols, data storage, and potential repercussions for misuse. Moreover, they highlight the importance of addressing digital inequality to ensure equitable access to video visits for all incarcerated individuals, including those from marginalised communities and held in remote facilities. Achieving this envisioned future requires substantial investment in infrastructure, capacity building, and a redefinition of visitation rules. Antojado and Ryan advocate for high-quality technological setups, intuitive digital platforms, and training for prison staff in digital literacy, conflict management, and empathetic communication to facilitate the successful implementation and management of hybrid visitation models.

Conclusion

Despite these ethical considerations, the allure of commercial gain often fuels the development of digital devices that prioritise profit over the well-being and rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals. This is particularly evident in certain sectors, such as prisoner email and video communication (see Maass, 2015) that offer platforms as a service to correctional agencies and individuals incarcerated within them. Platforms, as Srnicek (2017, p. 43) explains, are “general infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact. They therefore position themselves as intermediaries that bring together different users: customers, advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers, and even physical objects”. In the past decade, a significant volume of scholarship has examined new forms of capitalism – variously conceptualised as surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019) and platform capitalism (Langley & Leyshon, 2017; Srnicek, 2017) – born from the affordances of platforms as a service. Despite this, relatively little research has examined their implications for the correctional agencies that have increasingly integrated digital platforms into their infrastructures and regimes. Bringing work on contemporary forms of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017) into conversation with work examining crime control as an industry (Christie, 1993/2016), future research may explore what we might term the “prison media complex” (Stiernstedt & Kaun, 2022) or platform carceralism: the political economy of software as a crime control industry.

It is now nearly 40 years ago that Stanley Cohen identified the transition from overt strategies of social control to more decentralised and less perceptible forms. Presciently, Cohen argued that the future of social control would involve the deployment of data technologies: “The technological paraphernalia previously directed at the individual, will now be invested in cybernetics, management, systems analysis, surveillance, information gathering and opportunity reduction” (Cohen, 1985, p. 147). The digitalisation of corrections is just one aspect of the deployment of digital technologies for social control ends. We trust that the lessons and ideas presented in this special issue will provide readers with new insights into this important and rapidly developing topic.