Could a self-monitoring system for criminals replace prisons one day?

In the 2020s, the United States was spending a whopping $182 billion per year to lock up its citizens. No other country has imprisoned so many people or spent so much to do so. And the United States was not alone: ​​prisons in many countries around the world were overcrowded, inhumane, and expensive. So why not just get rid of it? This became possible when technology was developed so that people could be monitored and detained in their homes – and when society understood the benefits.

The HomeGuard program, which replaced traditional prisons, had three elements. The first was an ankle bracelet that monitored the prisoner’s precise location. The second was a harness containing sensors that recorded what the person did and said. If the terms of the sentence were violated – for example when the detainee left the agreed detention area or engaged in illegal behavior – the third element comes into play: the person is temporarily incapacitated by an energy device similar to a stun gun. The prisoners quickly learned the rules.

It is not surprising that the first countries to abolish prisons were Scandinavian, where incarceration was seen as a means of protecting the rest of the community rather than as a means of imposing punishment. (“HomeGuard” is a translation of the Norwegian word hjemmevernet.)

Halden Prison, a maximum security facility in Norway, opened in 2010 with barred windows, en-suite bathrooms in cells, televisions and high-quality furniture. Inmates ate food and played games with unarmed prison officers, not guards, and were encouraged to work to earn money. Baffled outsiders have compared the prison to a comfortable hotel. In contrast, in American institutions in the first quarter of the 21st century, mistreatment of inmates was widespread. Recidivism in Norway was around 20 percent after two years, compared to 50 percent in the United Kingdom and 60 to 70 percent in the United States. Halden was expensive, but prisoners were reintegrated into society more effectively, saving money in the long run.

Even in progressive Scandinavia, some members of the public believed that wrongdoers should be punished. However, sociologists have found that if the public is shown that excessive, brutal, and gratuitous punishment is bad for society and does not protect the community, they may be convinced that another method is better. This is what HomeGuard decided to do.

The first selvfengsel The trial (“self-prison”) was launched in 2030 in Norway. Prisoners were fitted with secure ankle bracelets transmitting a GPS location signal, and a harness was worn to continuously film the prisoner’s face and run it through facial recognition software. This prevented individuals from passing the sensor harness to another person. The artificial intelligence monitored the prisoner’s actions – for example, monitoring the websites he visited and the messages and calls he made.

Action was taken if the terms of their sentence were violated. A conducted energy device is the hardware typically used in a stun gun. Embedded in a prisoner’s ankle bracelet, it delivered an electric shock if the AI ​​monitoring system determined that a violation of sentencing rules had occurred. The police were then alerted.

The HomeGuard program was designed following a proposal made in 2018 by Dan Hunter of King’s College London and colleagues. They calculated that even if prisoners were equipped with new technology every year, self-imprisonment would cost tens of thousands of dollars less than traditional prison over the course of a person’s sentence. And the price fell further as the technology became cheaper.

Initially, selvfengsel was tested in Bergen. All prisoners not convicted of capital offenses (or crimes of equivalent seriousness) were fitted with self-jail technology and sent home. The project was a huge financial success, which contributed to the social message that physical prisons were expensive, inhumane, inefficient and archaic. To the rest of the world following the trial, it became clear that conventional prisons were not sufficiently protecting society due to high recidivism rates.

Technological incarceration was better in every way, and selvfengsel soon spread throughout the rest of Scandinavia. Trials then took place across Europe, but also in India, Mexico, Brazil, Australia and even the United States. By 2050, 95 percent of prisons in these countries had closed. The savings were invested in education and health. Crime rates fell both because of societal improvements and because the stigma of being constantly monitored was a powerful incentive to stay on the straight and narrow. Parents would tell their children, “Don’t break the law or you’ll go to jail,” and the threat was enough.

Rowan Hooper is the New Scientist podcast editor and author of How to Spend a Trillion Dollars: The 10 Global Problems We Can Actually Solve. Follow him on Bluesky @rowhoop.bsky.social. In Future Chronicles, he explores an imagined story of inventions and developments to come.