Rationalizing the coercive police monitoring of people with cognitive differences who wander through conceptions of 'vulnerability' and 'risk': Findings from a case study of Project Lifesaver


Krystle Shore, University of Waterloo

People with cognitive differences (e.g., people diagnosed with autism or dementia) often engage in wandering behaviour. While wandering can be a meaningful and enjoyable activity for these individuals, it can become dangerous and is a commonly expressed concern for their caregivers. As such, many caregivers rely on consumer electronic monitoring (EM) devices to keep their loved ones safe. Police organizations across Canada and the U.S. are also involved in managing the safety of people who wander through ‘Project Lifesaver’ surveillance programs; caregivers living in jurisdictions where police have implemented Project Lifesaver can have the people with cognitive differences they care for outfitted by police with radio frequency transmitter bracelets. Then, in the event of a wandering incident, police can use radio frequency tracking antenna to home in on the bracelet’s signal and locate the device wearer. While the intentions behind these EM practices may seem benevolent, literature on caregiver EM of people with cognitive differences shows that such practices carry a propensity to erode the personal autonomy, sense of self, and quality of life for those being monitored. Further, research shows that police efforts to protect vulnerable populations often rely on carceral logics and tactics and can therefore lead to serious individual and systemic harms for the communities targeted by the intervention. This paper draws from a large, qualitative case study of Project Lifesaver and considers how the program is designed and rationalized as a form of protection for people with cognitive differences and how it operates as such in an Ontario context, including the implications of the program for the communities it is designed to protect. This research involves content and thematic analyses of a variety of data sources including observations of an international Project Lifesaver conference and training program, the contents of Project Lifesaver promotional material and internal police documents (obtained through Freedom of Information requests), and interviews with various stakeholders involved in Ontario Project Lifesaver programs. The study adopts an abductive analytic approach, using an iterative process of data collection and analysis to situate empirical findings in relation to existing theoretical insights. Of note, two theoretical frameworks proved especially relevant to the analysis: Jennifer Musto’s (2016) concept of ‘carceral protectionism,’ which describes how state interventions can deliver protection for vulnerable populations through carceral systems and tactics, and classical Foucauldian perspectives on the relationship between population control and the promotion of population health. Findings discussed here call into question the protective benefits of Project Lifesaver for people with cognitive differences by showing that Project Lifesaver tracking technology is not often deployed by Ontario police to locate individuals enrolled in the program. Moreover, findings reveal Project Lifesaver to be a coercive and dehumanizing form of police surveillance that is rationalized as ‘care’ for vulnerable populations. In practice, the program denies the autonomy of those being monitored and renders them as objects to be tracked rather than humans to be engaged with and empowered. At the same time, these problematic program elements are obscured by Project Lifesaver discourse that frames people with cognitive differences as a particularly vulnerable population: classifications of vulnerability are applied in such a way that these individuals are simultaneously characterized as at-risk of imminent danger and inherently risky and dangerous. This discourse, in turn, reinforces the need for coercive police surveillance to manage this population’s behaviour. Study findings situate Project Lifesaver as a form carceral protectionism — the program functions as a form of social control that merges carceral logics, technologies, and techniques with the protection of vulnerable groups. As a result, the program extends the reach of the police apparatus into population health and welfare, as well as into the private domain of caregiving. Importantly, though, it is the ‘caring’ elements of PL that buttress this expansion of the state’s carceral machinery; the invasive, coercive, and dehumanizing aspects of the program are veiled by constructions of vulnerability and risk which effectively position this police surveillance as a necessary and benevolent safety mechanism for people with cognitive differences. Thus, Project Lifesaver operates as a subtle form of population control—one that appeals to caregivers’ rational interests in managing the safety of their dependents. 

This paper will be presented at the following session: