could we see a brand new kind of jail?

Over at The Atlantic, Graeme Wood is pondering the idea of reserving long jail terms only for the most violent and dangerous offenders, while letting those convicted of smaller crime out on the streets. But they wouldn't simply be free to do whatever they want. Oh no. Instead, they would be hooked up to electronic devices that can monitor every second of their day, and should they walk by the wrong building, or fail to get back home, or arrive to work on time without a legitimate excuse, they face a short, but immediate stint in jail. Rather than spending an average of $35,000 a year on jailing criminals very likely to wind right back in jail, and exposed to long, harsh sentences for relatively minor crimes thanks to draconian laws passed by politicians who want to be seen as tough on crime, the goal is to turn life after the guilty verdict into a strict, virtual confinement.

If you've been convicted of a harsh enough crime, you would be fitted with an electronic tracking device which will watch all your comings and goings, reporting them in real time to the police. Tampering with them would only land you in jail. So while your body might technically be free and out of a prison bed, your mind isn't, and you would in effect live in jail without ever setting foot in it, knowing that one false move is guaranteed to bring down the wrath of the law. It's already happening in jurisdictions across the country to track sex offenders and drug addicts who could be kept out of jail but still need plenty of supervision. And there may one day be even more to it than simply monitoring their whereabouts, as Wood considers the high tech future…

Right now the electrostatic patches made by BI and others monitor the sweat of parolees only for alcohol. But why stop there? Despite some practical hurdles, they could perhaps be upgraded to taste other substances, such as amphetamines or other drugs. And if patches can ensure that certain foreign substances remain out of the bloodstream, why not ensure that others are added  to it — pharmaceuticals, say, to inhibit libido or muzzle aggression or keep psychosis at bay.

They could even, again in theory, police the natural substances in our sweat, our hormones and neurotransmitters, the juices that determine our moods and desires. No machine currently exists [capable of] sniffing out criminal intent, or schizophrenia, or sexual arousal, from the armpits of a parolee or probationer, but the forward march of technology suggests that such devices are far from impossible, and that perhaps someday routine monitoring by authorities could be used to map convicts not just geographically but emotionally as well.

And he has a point, to an extent. While monitoring neurotransmitter levels would require a plug into the brain, detecting emotions based on respiration, sweating, or body heat are very plausible. Just as it would be to hit an out of control offender with an electric shock should he or she fail to comply with police orders. In fact, the technology is almost there already and could easily be implemented in the near future. And what's to say that the very same politicians who introduced laws that filled American jails to bursting wouldn't allow all of these applications for remote tracking devices to then present themselves as being truly tough on crime, following fiery campaign speeches terrifying potential voters about hordes of criminals prowling the streets a night with too few restrictions? The end result might actually be even more severe than being incarcerated, although far more likely to keep criminals from re-offending.

Essentially this virtual jail is borrowing from behavioral psychology, where a system of negative and positive reinforcements effectively modifies your habits over time, something that you can't really accomplish in gang- dominated, violent prisons where inmates run businesses, assault about a fifth of their fellow inmates, and territorial battles spill over into cells and exercise yards. Still, even if we monitor every moment of the wired-up offenders' days, read their e-mails, listen to their phone calls, enforce their behavior with electronic systems, and throw them in jail minutes after they step out of bounds, I'm sure there will still be people who will eye all those around them for any sign of a tracking device, terrified of running into an unruly criminal mentioned by a pundit, or someone running for office and in need of scaring up some votes. And that fact may slow adoption of this substitute for jail time across the nation and keep our prison populations close to current levels for the foreseeable future. Change tends to come very slowly to a realm where fear and anger reign.