Digitize and Punish Lib/E: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age

by Brian Jefferson

Tracing the rise of digital computing in policing and punishment and its harmful impact on criminalized communities of color

 

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that law enforcement agencies have access to more than 100 million names stored in criminal history databases. In some cities, 80 percent of the black male population is registered in these databases. Digitize and Punish explores the long history of digital computing and criminal justice, revealing how big tech, computer scientists, university researchers, and state actors have digitized carceral governance over the past forty years—with devastating impact on poor communities of color.

Providing a comprehensive study of the use of digital technology in American criminal justice, Brian Jefferson shows how the technology has expanded the wars on crime and drugs, enabling our current state of mass incarceration and further entrenching the nation’s racialized policing and punishment. After examining how the criminal justice system conceptualized the benefits of computers to surveil criminalized populations, Jefferson focuses on New York City and Chicago to provide a grounded account of the deployment of digital computing in urban police departments.

By highlighting the intersection of policing and punishment with big data and web technology—resulting in the development of the criminal justice system’s latest tool, crime data centers—Digitize and Punish makes clear the extent to which digital technologies have transformed and intensified the nature of carceral power.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Race, Sociology, Politics

Audio CD

First published April 7, 2020

Reviews

[tiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does an incredible job at laying out the history of criminal justice technology in America. After reading about the various ways in which the empty promises of technology to create better police, safer communities, yada yada yada have ultimately only resulted in a digitized carceral state equipped with more modern (and dystopian) ways of inflicting violence upon stigmatized populations, I am reminded of a quote from Freedom is a Constant Struggle. In it, Angela Davis states, “Reform doesn’t come after the advent of the prison; it accompanies the birth of the prison. So prison reform has always only created better prisons.”

How much money have we dumped into developing technology with the alleged goal of preventing crime and improving the criminal justice system only to bring more harm to communities through overpolicing, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of entire populations of people? And why does it continue?

Jefferson addresses these thoughts in his conclusion. “Opposition [to digitized criminalization] requires decommodifying the criminal justice system’s institutional landscape. So long as criminal justice technology is produced for profit, newer technologies are bound to make their way to the market.”

“If opposition to digitized modes of criminalization is to gain momentum, it cannot only be defensive; it must also be abolitionist. This is to say that it must question the very society that incentivizes the production of technologies for racialized social management. It must consider who the beneficiaries are, be they in the government, the university, or the IT sector.”

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book enumerated the vast infrastructures of criminalizing surveillance with detail and precision. The “panopticon” of state surveillance is realized by a concrete, material collection of nodes and technologies that feed databases in order to control criminalized populations. This book is essential for apprehending the scope and function of this digital ecosystem, so that we can target and combat its proliferation. As the conclusion states, the fight cannot be for better “bias-free algorithms” but instead a seizure of the means of digital communication and a dismantling of the carceral system as a whole.

[Magdalena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suffers a little from having been written and published just before the sea change in consciousness raising that came about after the murder of George Floyd. The conclusions are a little more obvious, the arguments a little easier. This is not to say this isn't a good book. This is a great book, especially for scholars (formal or otherwise) who are community-inclined and who can use some historical background.

[Xavier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A super interesting history of the growth of carceral surveillance and how it intertwines with racilized criminalization. I also appreciate how it grounds its discussion in developments in Chicago and New York to give us a sense of the scale and trajectory as well as how people are in struggle to resist this technological encroachment. I couldn't put it down until the last page passed my hand!

[Ash Mayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jefferson does an excellent job of detailing the history of digital technology’s thorough integration into the US police apparatus and carceral system. Further, Jefferson clearly explains how the history of tech + criminal justice has allowed racist policing practices to deepen, expand, and, most disturbingly, be justified by the “objectivity” of data.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does a great job providing the history of carceral logics and how racist they are but something about the way it’s written I felt it could have been tighter. It felt a bit winding and over written without ever reaching clear points.

[Grant Wingo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is extremely important! Loved it.

[Fred Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book. Writing can be pretty dense but would work well in a technology/policy course showing how structural racism does get "embedded".