Lockdown is not imprisonment!

The lifting of lockdown has turned out to be much more complicated than anticipated. It has been less smooth and more tense than expected, and remains a source of worry for many. Meanwhile, some people who are very comfortable with their living arrangements are almost embarrassed by their situation, as they ultimately enjoyed this apparent deprivation of liberty.

The decision to place all of France in lockdown led to comparisons with incarceration, as the country’s inhabitants were also deprived of their freedom of movement, just like its 70,000 prisoners. Similarly, 11 May, the day restrictions began to be lifted, was widely seen as a kind of liberation.

Prison metaphors during lockdown are misleading, and we should now be careful to avoid misinterpreting the meaning of freedom and the deprivation of freedom.

First of all, during lockdown we had a degree of choice in our residence (not everyone can afford to live anywhere, and not everyone has a second home to escape to); our companions in misfortune were generally our loved ones instead of strangers; few people were confined in a space as small as nine square meters (the size of a standard cell, which makes social distancing impossible); we had access to medical consultations by video and could receive a diagnosis without too much difficulty or too long a wait; and above all, we could communicate with whoever we wanted, whenever we wanted (by phone and internet) and could leave home more or less whenever we wanted (as long as we had the required form, and except in places where a curfew was imposed).

If comparisons with prison are misleading, can lockdown instead be compared to other penal sanctions, such as electronic tagging? This is used to monitor individuals under house arrest, which seems reminiscent of the weeks-long lockdown. The 10,000 people in France who have been sentenced to this punishment are only allowed to leave the house for a limited number of legally defined reasons, and they must prove that they have a valid reason for being outside. They are only allowed out for a limited amount of time, which means that they cannot travel too far away from home; this in turn limits the activities available to them. The rest of the time, they must remain at home. Like lockdown, this results in marked inequality: while some individuals are confined to cramped studios, others enjoy spacious houses with private gardens. The experiences of electronic tagging and lockdown appear to be quite similar: inactivity leading to frustration and boredom, tensions with loved ones in the same house, the need for outlets (television, video games, alcohol or even drugs), etc.

However, we should be cautious about drawing these parallels. The experience of house arrest enforced by electronic tagging is not the same as lockdown because house arrest is a punishment, so the legal system imposes much more frequent and intrusive monitoring.

Under lockdown, we can still manage our own time: even if we can only go out for one hour per day, we can choose when we go out or choose not to go out at all if we don’t want to.

This is not the case for individuals under house arrest, who must explain any change in their daily routine, which engenders a feeling of infantilization. Beyond this close monitoring, electronic tagging carries a stigma and lowers the individual’s self-esteem and their loved ones’ opinions of them. As one such individual explains, electronic tagging makes you ask yourself “am I a bad person? If not, why do I have to wear an electronic tag?” The person is constantly reminded of their punishment, even in their most private moments. As one electronic tag wearer puts it, “even when I’m naked, there’s something that’s still there. I take everything off, even my earrings and glasses, but the tag is still there. I can’t remove it”.

The unpleasantness of electronic tagging (few people can deal with it for longer than a year) is not just because the individual must stay at home, but also because of the meaning attached to house arrest.

The values that society attaches to the coronavirus lockdown and to house arrest and electronic tagging are not at all the same.

If those under lockdown can look at their experience as a modest contribution to the “war” against coronavirus, as the French president Emmanuel Macron described it, those under house arrest feel only frustration and even shame about their situation. The spatial experiences of lockdown and house arrest are shaped by the discourses surrounding them, and these are drastically different.

It has been argued that the lifting of lockdown can only be successful with increased surveillance of sick people and their movements, which would require technologies similar to those used to monitor prisoners in the various prison systems around the world. The potential spread of technologies designed to punish prisoners beyond the prison setting is a worrying development, because it both extends and normalizes restrictions on civil liberties.

It is ironic that wireless technologies, which were initially developed in response to our increased mobility, could be used to restrict individuals’ freedom of movement and blur the lines between public and private life.

However, without knowing the details of all the possible technologies, it is best to remain cautious when making comparisons.

In any case, our collective experience of lockdown is not remotely the same as the individual experience of being part of the prison system. In prison, anxiety over Covid-19 was compounded by overpopulation and, in fact, by the impossibility of self-isolation! Nonetheless, we hope that these few weeks of lockdown have made people think about the cruelty of punishing people by depriving them of their freedom of movement for weeks or years at a time.