Carceral Data Violence

In a nation of racialized mass incarceration, data practices have arisen out of carceral imaginaries (e.g., cells of data, controlling for variables in regression) and logics. Here, carceral logics are those that apply confinement, discipline, and punitivity to specific people and populations, while excluding others. They persevere through the surety of enclosures that cleave one variable and category from another. The premise is that it is possible to abstract data into discrete cells wholly apart from the fleshy being of whom they ostensibly speak. The use of cells is not a mere metaphor, but an organizing framework through which carceral analyses shape meaning far beyond concertina wire fences. This research grew out of my ethnographic dissertation research and addresses algorithmic arraignment recommendation system for judges, the fusion center on Rikers, the Securus contracted telephone service, and the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) bracelet pilots. Each of these facets conveys a mode of surveillance and corporate control that has burgeoned across every aspect of incarceration with the coalescence of the digital age and the carceral-industrial-complex. Including these elements allowed me to span from the embodied experiences of incarcerated people to the diffuse prison-industrial-complex. This research comes together to intervene in the very foundation of carceral knowledge production and the technologies it relies upon.