Awards

• Winner of Winner, 2021 Michael J. Hindelang Outstanding Book Award, American Society of Criminology.

Overview

The proliferation of data-driven criminal justice operations creates millions of criminal records each year in the United States. Documenting everything from a police stop to a prison sentence, these records take on a digital life of their own as they are collected by law enforcement and courts, posted on government websites, re-posted on social media, online news and mugshot galleries, and bought and sold by data brokers. The result is ""digital punishment,"" where mere suspicion or a brush with the law can have lasting consequences. In Digital Punishment, Sarah Esther Lageson unpacks criminal recordkeeping in the digital age, as busy and overburdened criminal justice agencies turned to technological solutions offered by IT companies over the last two decades. These operations produce a mountain of data, including the names, photographs, and home addresses of people arrested or charged with a crime, transforming millions of paper records into a digital commodity. Regardless of factual or legal guilt, these records rapidly multiply across the private sector background checking and personal data industries. Emboldened by public records laws designed for paper-based systems, criminal record data has become an extremely valuable resource for employers, landlords, and communities to monitor criminal behavior and assess other people. But while transparency laws were originally designed to allow governmental watchdogging, digital punishment has redirected our gaze toward one another. Hundreds of interviews detailed in this book reveal the consequences of digital punishment, as people purposefully opt out of society to cope with privacy and due process violations. As criminal histories impact nearly every aspect of private and civic life, the collateral consequences of even the most minor records are much more than barriers to employment and housing. For the criminal record-holder, the messy entanglement of government bureaucracy is nothing compared to the jurisdiction-less haze of the internet. Drawing on empirical data, interviews, and review of case law, this book powerfully demonstrates that addressing digital punishment will require a direct acknowledgement of privacy and dignity in the context of public accusation, and a reckoning of how rehabilitation can actually occur in a society that never forgets.

Full Product Details

9780190872007

Table of Contents

Reviews

Digital Punishment illuminates the power of digital tools like Google and state criminal record databases to vastly advance the accessibility of information, while at the same time devastating the reputations and lives of the persons they marginalize. Essential reading for anyone interested in the topics of digital memory, the future of reputation, and the mediation of reality by powerful state and corporate forces. -Frank Pasquale, Piper & Marbury Professor of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law A stunning, brilliant, and deeply researched account-Digital Punishment reveals how the considerable challenges for those ensnared by American's criminal justice system have become exponentially more challenging in the big data era. -Mona Lynch, Professor of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California Irvine In this deeply researched account, Lageson paints an incisive and often terrifying picture of punishment in the twenty-first century, as America's mammoth penal system joins the online market for private data. In our digital age-when mugshots and rap sheets are bought and sold-this is the single best analysis of how we got here, what's at stake, and the steps necessary for building a more equitable future. -Forrest Stuart, author of Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy Gripping and meticulously researched, Digital Punishment takes us into the labyrinth of misinformation, commodification, and disparity that underlies online criminal records and reveals deep injustices that result from their proliferation. A must-read for anyone who connects to the Internet. -Megan Comfort, author of Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison The stigma of criminalization is not what it used to be. Today, the 'scarlet letter' floats around indefinitely in cyberspace and can be nearly impossible to remove. Lageson's pioneering and authoritative analysis brings the study of punishment squarely into the Digital Age and will inspire a new generation of research in the field. -Shadd Maruna, author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives

The stigma of criminalization is not what it used to be. Today, the 'scarlet letter' floats around indefinitely in cyberspace and can be nearly impossible to remove. Lageson's pioneering and authoritative analysis brings the study of punishment squarely into the Digital Age and will inspire a new generation of research in the field. -Shadd Maruna, author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives Gripping and meticulously researched, Digital Punishment takes us into the labyrinth of misinformation, commodification, and disparity that underlies online criminal records and reveals deep injustices that result from their proliferation. A must-read for anyone who connects to the Internet. -Megan Comfort, author of Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison In this deeply researched account, Lageson paints an incisive and often terrifying picture of punishment in the twenty-first century, as America's mammoth penal system joins the online market for private data. In our digital age-when mugshots and rap sheets are bought and sold-this is the single best analysis of how we got here, what's at stake, and the steps necessary for building a more equitable future. -Forrest Stuart, author of Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy A stunning, brilliant, and deeply researched account-Digital Punishment reveals how the considerable challenges for those ensnared by American's criminal justice system have become exponentially more challenging in the big data era. -Mona Lynch, Professor of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California Irvine Digital Punishment illuminates the power of digital tools like Google and state criminal record databases to vastly advance the accessibility of information, while at the same time devastating the reputations and lives of the persons they marginalize. Essential reading for anyone interested in the topics of digital memory, the future of reputation, and the mediation of reality by powerful state and corporate forces. -Frank Pasquale, Piper & Marbury Professor of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law

Author Information

Sarah Esther Lageson is a sociologist who studies criminal justice, law, privacy, and technology. Lageson is Assistant Professor at Rutgers University-Newark School of Criminal Justice, a recipient of the National Institutes of Justice Early Career Award, and an American Bar Foundation Faculty Scholar.

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