Returning to the digital world: Digital technology use and privacy management of women transitioning from incarceration

Abstract

Based on interviews with 75 women transitioning from incarceration, our research identifies technology access and skills barriers facing this population and their underlying concerns and motivations in navigating privacy online. Our results suggest precarious housing and financial situations, concerns about ex-partners, mental health issues, and lack of self-efficacy pose challenges for their access to and use of digital technologies and influence their online privacy perspectives. Many participants reported relying primarily on cellphones for various tasks including job applications. Closing public places including libraries amid the COVID-19 pandemic put them at an even greater disadvantage, as many of them depend on computers or Wi-Fi available in those places. Nothing-to-lose attitudes were salient among this group resulting in many not taking precautionary measures online or choosing to go offline. Our research highlights the importance of building academic-community partnerships to provide technology and privacy education tailored for this population’s particular needs and desires.

Self-efficacy and Use of Digital Health Care and Social Welfare Services Among Incarcerated People: Cross-sectional Survey Study

“…Seo et al [ 21 ] pointed out that a lack of self-efficacy poses challenges for incarcerated people in accessing and using digital technologies. Our results are consistent with this, and the results show that without adequate self-efficacy and internet self-efficacy, released people are at risk of digital exclusion.…”

“…Gaps in digital competence can be related to not only actual skills, but also a person’s lack of confidence in his or her ability to use online services. Seo et al [ 21 ] showed that a lack of self-efficacy poses challenges for incarcerated people to access and use digital technologies. Consequently, this study focused on the significance of self-efficacy in the use of digital health care and social welfare services among incarcerated people in Finland.…”

Computation, Rule Following, and Ethics in AIs

“…With AI being embedded in many aspects of our lives, warnings are being raised about implications for furthering inequality or bias already existing in society [19,22,24]. A widely shared concern, for example, is that use of AI models will lead to legal, financial, or health initiatives disproportionately harmful to marginalized populations if these populations are not properly represented in training datasets [19,25,26]. In this paper, we argue that addressing this and other related issues requires rethinking beyond the legitimate critiques regarding representation and sampling.…”

Locked up and left out: Formerly incarcerated people in the context of digital inclusion

“…Gurusami (2019) found that the women lacked higher level digital skills that would allow them to escape the digital criminal record and surveillance from the carceral state, and that this made them susceptible to potential exploitation. Similarly, Seo et al (2020) highlight access barriers and a lack of higher level skills that would allow formerly incarcerated women to protect their privacy online, leading to “nothing to lose” attitudes that left the women vulnerable to various threats. In a similar vein, Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al (2019) found that formerly incarcerated men were lacking employment- and job-search-specific digital skills, as they did not receive formal training and depended on family members for digital skills support.…”