Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Surveillance and Citizenship for People on Pretrial Release

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Because people in the United States are thought to be innocent until proven guilty, there has recently been much controversy over social bias in pretrial processes. In response, current restructuring practices often include bond reform, which can result in decreases in pretrial incarceration, but also usually leads to increases in other measures of surveillance, such as electronic monitoring, 24-hour curfews, or random drug tests. We know very little about how surveillance practices during the pretrial stage can impact access to political, civil, and social citizenship, although we do know that these practices are stratified by social group. This project studies how people who are released pretrial still experience methods of surveillance and why certain people are more likely to experience harsher measures of surveillance than others. By better understanding how surveillance influences an accused person's life and who is more acutely impacted by this surveillance, this project will provide insight into how the criminal legal system stratifies citizenship even before an individual is convicted of a crime. Further, findings from this project will inform governmental policy regarding the treatment of accused people who have yet to stand trial. This project use two sources of data: ethnographic courtroom observations and in-depth interviews. The project will include six months of courtroom observations in a large city in order to understand which types of cases result which types of disposition and surveillance in the context of pre-trial release. The project will also conduct 60 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with people accused of felonies but who are on pretrial release. Data from these interviews will reveal details regarding pretrial conditions and how these conditions have influenced respondent economic and social statuses, as well as access to political rights. All data will be analyzed with MaxQDA for two cycles of coding. The first cycle will focus on open coding and the second cycle will focus on theoretical coding. Findings from the project will contribute to sociological theories regarding incarceration, surveillance and risk, and social citizenship within the context of United States democracy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.