The Case for the Mandatory Supervised Release Reentry Freedom Act
by Chijindu Obiofuma
The following statement is a written testimony in support of House Bill 1115, the Mandatory Supervised Release Reentry Freedom Act. This legislation would eliminate the use of electronic monitoring for people on mandatory supervised release unless they are required by law to be on a monitor.
Though electronic monitoring presents myriad issues that should concern the presiding committee, one of the most powerful arguments against monitoring is the lack of research documenting its use. There is neither a solid body of research nor reliable evidence supporting the efficacy of monitoring in reducing crime, protecting survivors of domestic violence or improving compliance with court proceedings. What evidence there is comprises studies with small sample sizes, localized results, and sometimes faulty methodology. Despite the lack of evidence, system actors have promoted monitoring technology’s capacity to ensure public safety and court compliance. Innovations in criminal justice should be evidence-based, especially when, as with electronic monitoring, they involve significant burdens on liberty. Electronic monitoring does not meet this standard.
Community corrections data reveals that heightened surveillance and supervision create additional opportunities for people to “fail,” and face revocation and incarceration, often for non-criminal behavior. The near-constant surveillance function of monitoring makes it more likely that people will be incarcerated for technical violations that pose no threat to public safety.¹ These revocations only increase jail and prison populations, contributing to one of the problems electronic monitoring is meant to prevent.
The unproven effectiveness of monitoring and the likelihood that monitoring will contribute to the crisis of mass incarceration invoke lessons from probation. When probation was first introduced in the 1980s, jurisdictions leapt to adopt it as a “cost-effective” and “humane” alternative to incarceration. Probation populations ballooned, and “the U. S….achieved exceptional levels of punitiveness in both incarceration and community supervision.”² The combination of liberty-restricting conditions, heightened supervision, and continually accumulating supervision costs created new opportunities for incarceration that allowed probation to make its own contributions to the carceral system.³ In 2013, close to 4 million adults were on probation.⁴
Community corrections data reveals that heightened surveillance and supervision create additional opportunities for people to “fail,” and face revocation and incarceration, often for non-criminal behavior.
Like probation, electronic monitoring promises a subtler intervention meant to address the system of mass incarceration while cutting correctional costs and keeping communities safe. Like probation at its nascence, electronic monitoring has relatively little evidence supporting this claim while evidence mounts concerning its capacity to contribute to the problems of mass incarceration. With the passage of HB 386 — a bill requiring the collection of electronic monitoring data — Illinois has positioned itself to become a leader on criminal justice reform. The passage of HB1115, which would limit the use of electronic monitoring technology, would be another step in the right direction.
Chijindu (Jindu) Obiofuma is a second-year fellow at Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program. While at Harvard, she has solidified her interest in movement lawyering, specifically conducting research directed by and accountable to impacted communities whose experiences, analysis and intuitive advocacy inform their expertise. Prior to joining CJPP, she received her J.D. from Columbia Law School.
This is part of a series titled #NoDigitalPrisons. Learn more about the issue here.
Sources included in this blog:
[1] Ronald P. Corbett Jr., Probation and Mass Incarceration: The Ironies of Correctional Practice, 28 Fed. Sen. R. 278, 279 (2016) (“A study in Michigan in 1996 found that…90 percent of those returned to prison were sent there for so-called “technical” violations — failed drug tests, failure to report, failure to meet financial obligations, and the like.”).
[2] Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Data Brief: American Exceptionalism in Probation Supervision, 28 Fed. Sent. R. 290 (2016).
[3] See Michelle S. Phelps, Mass Probation and Inequality: Race, Class, and Gender Disparities in Supervision and Revocation, in 2 HANDBOOK ON PUNISHMENT DECISIONS: LOCATIONS OF DISPARITY 43, 44 (Jeffery T. Ulmer & Mindy S. Bradley eds., 2018) (“[T]hough frequently dismissed as a “slap on the wrist,” probation can entail fairly onerous supervision requirements, including frequent reporting and drug testing, expensive fines and fees, and tedious rules and regulations. Probationers frequently fail to meet the multitude of conditions, which can lead to revocation to jail or prison. For these individuals, probation represents a delayed path to prison rather than a true diversion or alternative[.]”).
[4] Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Data Brief: American Exceptionalism in Probation Supervision, 28 Fed. Sent. R. 290 (2016).
