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Paradigms Of Restraint, Erin Murphy

Duke Law Journal

Incapacitation of dangerous individuals has conventionally entailed the exercise of physical control over an actual body: the state confines the person in jail. But advances in technology have changed that convention. A variety of new technologies-such as GPS tracking bracelets, biometric scanners, online offender indexes, and DNA databases-give the government power to control dangerous persons without relying on any exertion of physical control. The government can track the location of a person in real time, receive remote notification that an individual has ingested alcohol, or electronically zone someone into a home or out of a public park. It can prove …