(In)visible carcerality: Electronic monitoring in Portugal and Brazil

Electronic monitoring has emerged as a rapidly expanding and significant form of carceral control. In this article, we consider electronic monitoring as integrated into the carceral continuum, not only as a spatially dispersed mechanism but also as operating through particular dynamics of visibility and invisibility. Considering the cases of Portugal and Brazil, we analyse how electronic monitoring (re)shapes and (re)articulates carceral dynamics across three interconnected axes: social and media representations, political and institutional dynamics and individual lived experiences. By unsettling conventional distinctions between confinement and freedom, punishment and rehabilitation, and presence and absence within a spectrum of invisibility–visibility–hypervisibility, electronic monitoring reframes the spatial, temporal and relational dimensions of carcerality.