France: “wearing the prison mark”

Franck Ollivon. Geography is a scientific discipline that looks at the spatial dimension of social interactions: that is, the way in which space impacts human relationships. As a system based on the principle of house arrest, electronic monitoring challenges geographers in terms of spatial dimensions.

The use of electronic tags first appeared in the 1960s in the United States in the field of psychiatry. It caught on 20 years later in the American penal system and reached France in the 2000s. The idea is to use technology to establish a new form of control remotely, a “prison without bars”. In the so-called “Northern” countries, it is one of the most recent steps in deinstitutionalisation, i.e., the transfer of sentencing from closed to open environments.

The duties entrusted to prisons are transferred to other facilities that are not necessarily penal in nature, namely open custody facilities.

Electronic monitoring creates a spatial constraint and raises questions about the limits of this constraint in terms of the mobility of those being monitored. What are the social repercussions of this system on the sentence conditions and the experience of offenders and their loved ones? For example, treatment programmes - particularly for addiction - can be imposed on offenders. This is not an issue in urban areas but can be highly problematic in suburban or rural ones: some offenders do not have a driver’s license or access to transportation. Spatial and territorial inequalities, like access to healthcare, have a major impact on travel. This issue is at the heart of sentences carried out outside of custodial facilities, as electronic monitoring replicates territorial inequalities.

FO. Electronic monitoring is based on the principle of house arrest. The person placed under house arrest must remain at home, or at any place that serves as their home, at certain times. A technical device monitors compliance with these obligations. It consists of a transmitter tag attached to the prisoner’s ankle and a transmission box connected to an electrical socket. The box picks up the radio waves transmitted by the bracelet and measures its presence within the perimeter of the home. That way, prison authorities can be sure that the prisoner is home at the designated time.

Electronic monitoring is a type of alternative to imprisonment: although prisoners are free to move around to a certain extent, they are still administratively imprisoned. As such, they must carry a document proving that they have been placed under electronic monitoring and that they are not in prison, despite being registered to one.

Whatever the conditions of electronic monitoring, in terms of duration or material conditions, the experience is always one of imprisonment. There are few restrictive dimensions to the location in which the person must be held. In terms of the surface area of the assigned space, nothing is legally stipulated: situations vary widely from one prisoner to another. However, some former prisoners have drawn similarities between being imprisoned at home and being in prison.

With house arrest, offenders keep themselves busy just as they do in prison: they watch more television and consume more psychoactive drugs and alcohol. These habits have been documented in scientific literature.

FO. For offenders, the tag acts as an element of distinction. It is a way to dissociate themselves from the population of prisoners referred to as “delinquents”. In other words: “I’m not a delinquent because I’m being monitored electronically; if I were a delinquent, I’d be in prison“.

In the eyes of society, the electronic tag is a stigma. The most obvious element is the object attached to the ankle, which identifies offenders in public places and reminds them of their offence. As one prisoner explained to me, the electronic bracelet is the only thing you can’t wash off. Beyond this material aspect, the restriction of mobility by time constraints is a stigmatising factor. Electronic monitoring entails a change in social practices: with an electronic tag, you can’t work overtime, you need a doctor’s note for medical visits, etc…

Although the electronic tag appears to be a device favouring reintegration, this is not always the case. Restricting mobility is an obstacle to social reintegration. Some offenders have even adopted an approach of self-imposed seclusion.

I therefore wondered about the basis for this constraint: why do Western penal systems care whether prisoners return home in the evening? This spatial information is considered important as it attests to the prisoner’s desistance process. It must say something about the prisoners themselves. However, sentencing judges and probation officers find that house arrest says little about this process. It is possible to reoffend without being detected by the surveillance system, and without violating the conditions of house arrest. By contrast, it is possible to return home late and still be well-integrated into society.

Electronic monitoring is therefore ambiguous, as offenders are no longer fully situated in prison but are not yet fully in society either.