In the last decade, as the critique of mass incarceration has grown more powerful, many reformers have embraced changes that release people from prisons and jails, but maintain some degree of surveillance. As educator, author, and activist James Kilgore brilliantly shows in his new book, these rapidly spreading reforms largely fall under the heading of “e-carceration”—a range of punitive technological interventions, from ankle monitors to facial recognition apps, that deprive people of their liberty, all in the name of ending mass incarceration.

E-carceration can block people’s access to employment, housing, healthcare, and even the chance to spend time with loved ones. Many of these technologies gather data that lands in corporate and government databases and may lead to further punishment or the marketing of their data to Big Tech.

For this launch Kilgore, himself a survivor of prison and e-carceration, will be joined in conversation by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Order a copy of Understanding E-carceration: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781620976142

***Register through Eventbrite to receive a link to the video conference on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and live captioning will be provided.***

Speakers:

James Kilgore is an activist, researcher, and writer based in Urbana, Illinois, where he has lived since paroling from prison in 2009. He is the director of the Challenging E-Carceration project at MediaJustice and the co-director of FirstFollowers Reentry Program in Champaign, Illinois. He is the author of five books, including Understanding E-Carceration and the award-winning Understanding Mass Incarceration (both from The New Press).

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Co-founder of many grassroots organizations including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network, Gilmore is author of the prize-winning Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (UC Press) and the forthcoming book Change Everything (Haymarket) . Recent honors include the SUNY-Purchase College Eugene V. Grant Distinguished Scholar Prize for Social and Environmental Justice (2015-16); the American Studies Association Richard A Yarborough Mentorship Award (2017); The Association of American Geographers Lifetime Achievement Award (2020); and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2021).