Where Coronavirus Is Surging—And Electronic Surveillance, Too
In Chicago and elsewhere, the number of people wearing an ankle monitor has jumped in recent months due to the pandemic.
For most of 2020, Chris, a father of three in Chicago, couldn’t leave his apartment: not to go for a walk, not to run errands, and not to take his son to the doctor when he broke his arm. And not because of quarantine. If Chris even stepped outside his front door without getting permission from authorities—a process that could take weeks—then the electronic monitor strapped to his ankle would notify law enforcement, possibly landing him in jail.
One day in August, Chris’s mother was out with his children when another relative suffered a health emergency, he says, forcing her to go to the hospital. She called Chris saying he had to come pick the kids up. “I’m a
