Abstract
As our lives, and the perceptions of the lives of others, are increasingly shaped by global online environments—managing both our privacy and identity is becoming progressively difficult. For individuals already marginalized within society, like those with criminal records, online spaces can extend these challenges through stigmatization. Sarah Lageson presents valuable and insightful research through well-reflected and critical arguments surrounding the increased digitalization, sale, and sharing of criminal records within the United States. A record that is often created and sold based on arrest rather than conviction. Raising significant questions about the changing nature and extension of punishment in today’s society, Digital Punishment argues that stigmatization from online environments is creating a form of punishment that is neither fair nor just.
Lageson’s work encompasses nine chapters. The initial introduction presents four central threads and components of digital punishment: disorder, commodification, surveillance, and disparity. Lageson offers a compelling argument of how the online nature of criminal records, including personal information and mug shots, increases stigmatization, challenges privacy, and extends harm to individuals. Lageson draws upon the importance of narrative methodologies to share valuable insight into the often inaccurate and complex nature of digital records. Pertinent to this chapter, and to the arguments presented in Digital Punishment, are the choices made by the state, corporations, and wider society which extend the stigmatization of individuals with a criminal record, further cementing wider cultural beliefs surrounding criminality.
Following the initial introduction, Lageson outlines the political and legislative history of criminal records and disclosure, the external and extended punishment created by the digital turn in data management, and the increased presence of privatization across the criminal justice sector. There are additional complexities here, where Lageson rightly raises the need to critically question the First Amendment and the public’s right to know versus an individual’s right to privacy. Online environments offer an instantaneous, lasting, and global space for stigmatization. Digital Punishment highlights how this feeds the captive consumer culture of criminality to extend the reach, and support the continuation, of public shaming through a 24-7 operation that has significant and wide-ranging consequences.
Chapter 2 offers a strong critical focus on data-driven justice. This highlights the poor management and inaccuracies of criminal records where responsibility for mistakes is paid for by the individual and often at a cost. As Lageson highlights, this is in cash, time, and reputation. The use of case studies helps demonstrate privacy limitations and display an increasingly punitive approach to criminality, even when individuals have yet to be found guilty or have had their records expunged. This is because online data are rarely updated due to no ownership or responsibility, complicating the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
This limited ownership and inaccuracy are further disentangled throughout Chapter 3 with questions raised surrounding who should own criminal record data and the sale of this public entity. The scope of discussion here is broad but complex, given the legislative backdrop, the leaks of confidential information, and difference between states. In addition, there are some well-founded debates reflected upon surrounding the increased personal and community responsibilities felt for crime control and safety. Each one is highlighted by Lageson to support the market of data-driven punishment leading the reader into the following two chapters where Digital Punishment provides a significant contribution to knowledge.
Through what Lageson terms “digilantes,” or regular citizens who (re)produce criminal record content on various online platforms, a digital trail that alters an individual’s identity is created, often resulting in public shaming outside of formal justice sanctions. The ease of access and ability to share material demonstrates a significant loss of control of criminal records data, reiterating public appetite for crime news as digilante sites extended the digital reach, footprint, and impact. As Lageson highlights in Chapter 5, this impact is not only digital, functioning rather as a ripple effect into many areas of an individual’s life and identity. A fundamental reflection presented in this chapter is how the increased digitalization of criminal records, and the methods in which they are sold and shared, stops people’s ability to move forward. Using well-established theoretical debates of both stigma and desistance, Lageson presents a compelling critical argument on how digital punishment limits personal agency, hindering cognitive and personal transformations. Consequently, this presents further challenges for accessing wider social structures and opportunities.
The focal point of Chapter 6 is the role and power of search engines in the results they present even when there is no conviction or a record has been sealed or expunged, serving to extend one’s punishment. Often due to data inaccuracies, expungement itself is evidenced to be a difficult and complex process. Even when individuals express a desire and have the means to challenge and correct personal information, Lageson highlights the confrontational and threatening retaliation from websites and platforms that flood search results. Chapter 7 raises questions about privacy in a digital age when criminal record data are a substantial business, with a primary concern in this chapter being the significance of imagery through what Lageson highlights as the mug shot black market.
Lageson’s concluding remarks succulently draw back to, and reflect upon, not only the traditional objectives of punishment but also the associated pains to argue how the effects of digital punishment are in fact dissimilar to those faced by individuals in prison. What is fundamentally questioned here is the value of digitalizing criminal records when the consequences and harm to the individual can be so great. What is stark is Lageson’s recognition of how every American can be at risk of digital punishment. This is determined not by a judge and jury but by the availability of online information which individuals have very limited control over as anyone and everyone has the power to apply a criminal label. Digital Punishment provides an insightful resource to a range of audiences interested in punishment, its impacts, and its changing nature or those interested in exploring the developments of stigma for individuals caught up in the criminal justice system.
