Electronic monitoring of inmates in the United States: a genealogic path

Abstract

This article outlines a genealogy of electronic monitoring dispositives in the United States of America, used for penal control. It investigates the first experiences with remote control of the so called deviant individuals, carried out by a group of psychologists and biologists in Harvard University. Subsequently, the penitentiary situation in the US is presented, between the decades of 1970 and 2000. It created a demand for the expansion of communitarian penal measures. The participation of the security industry in the development of electronic monitoring is emphasized as well as its impulse to increasing of the measure. Finally, some aspects of electronic monitoring are analyzed permitting to characterize it as a security dispositive connected to the consolidation of what Michel Foucault called neoliberal governmentality.