Mass Surveillance Used Nefariously in Non-Criminal Justice institutions Drives Down Access

How this issue has pushed already disenfranchised people away from jobs, education, banks, and hospitals, through diminished trust in the record-keeping process.

The Issue

At first glance, mass surveillance may make someone think of cities with too many cameras, like urban areas in New York, Israel, or China. And yet it is people’s private data, accessed unethically by law enforcement in the United States, outside of criminal justice agencies that is inviting concern. In the United States, lines are being blurred between once discrete data-collecting institutions like banks, schools, and hospitals, and criminal justice agencies. Not only is data from irrelevant institutions used to broaden the reach of the criminal justice system, but it is pushing people away from accessing institutions due to mistrust. This means that people who would otherwise be accessing banks, schools, hospitals, and job opportunities are skeptical to do so. This can lead to decreased opportunity and health, while creating dystopic conditions that weaponize institutions against the  people. 

System Avoidance

System avoidance is a concept introduced by Sarah Brayne, in 2014. Her research sought to conceptualize a way that encounters with police and the criminal justice system can harm people beyond the encounters, convictions, and punishments experienced in the American penal system. This article discusses her research in depth. 

For decades the criminal justice system has been “widening its net,” over people. In the 1970s and 1980s, the footprint of police and the criminal justice system was a mere shadow of what it is today. Legislation like the 1994 Crime Bill thrust police into communities that had not had much police contact before, leading to rising arrest rates that contributed to mass incarceration. Conventionally, mass incarceration and the punishment system is thought to consist of prisons, jails, and supervision–a field that governs the lives of about 1-in-31 Americans; about 25 percent of adult Americans have criminal records. Brayne’s research goes further, looking at the wider reach of criminal justice involvement in participation with institutions outside the conventional criminal justice system. 

It is well established in literature that having a criminal record is a form of negative social credit that deeply impacts people’s ability to find work, housing, and access to a variety of institutions and services. What was less known until now was how interactions with the criminal justice system created mistrust in other institutions, namely those that keep formal records. Brayne examined the effect of criminal justice involvement on people’s choice to participate in formal record-keeping agencies such as schools, banks, hospitals, and in conventional forms of employment. 

The Surveillance State: A Wide Umbrella

The technological age has broadened the ability for the government to spy on its people, in unsuspecting ways, and it has broadened the surveillance umbrella tremendously. Data collection methods once used for innocent reasons have broadened into more nefarious, deceitful practices. For example, between 1997-2006, Operation Talon was conducted in conjunction with sheriff officers and food stamp offices. The office would call people with warrants on behalf of their organization and tell people that they had issues processing their food stamps. People arrived to solve the problem, and sheriffs arrested more than 10,000 people with this bait. Consider the draconian nature of this practice for a moment: this practice permanently condemned people suspected of crimes to a lifetime of mistrust over public assistance programs, in order to manipulate the aid into tools for the police. 

Criminal Justice Involvement and Consequences 

Brayne’s research was broken into five groups based on criminal justice involvement: those who had simply been stopped and questioned by police were on the lower end of the research scale, while those who had been incarcerated were on the highest end. The assumption was that those who had lesser involvement would react perhaps less suspiciously when considering participating in formal institutions. Also, she ran her tests against informal institutions including churches and volunteer organizations, with the intent of isolating the record-keeping aspect of formal institutions.  

Her results indicated that people who have had criminal justice involvement are less likely to engage with banks, schools, employers, and were even less likely to go to the hospital when they were hurt. Surprisingly, it didn’t matter if the people had been convicted of a crime, incarcerated, or merely stopped and questioned by the police: the impact of criminal justice encounters more broadly led to a reduction in accessing these institutions. This meant that for those who found themselves interacting with police, say in neighborhoods where it was more common to have police presence, they would be less likely to build credit, get an education, and work in stable environments. 

Considering the Ramifications

Criminal justice involvement is not what it used to be. In the new, digital age, people that are low income, already marginalized, or particularly vulnerable are more likely to be isolated into corners of society under these broader surveillance systems. The weaponization of government assistance programs to be used as tools to catch criminal suspects is an egregious overstep of law enforcement, threatening both workers at such programs and the families of the suspects, who will now have a lifetime of mistrust over these important programs. 

Purposes of data collection need to be reevaluated. It is unacceptable in any society that even pays homage to notions of freedom to be using data as a way to spy on behalf of state-supported police agencies: policing in democracies is established by consent: this is not consensual. The impacts on these policies will deepen an individual’s marginalization from society, and while it is more pronounced in minority groups, others felt a deep sense of insecurity at being surveilled while just trying to see a doctor.