Doing Time/Time Done: Exploring the Temporalities of Datafication in the Smart Prison

The aim of this chapter is to explore emerging temporalities linked to datafication through the lens of a specific place: the smart prison. Datafication and the consequent regimes of anticipation, prediction and pre-emption are increasingly discussed from a critical perspective in terms of discriminatory bias, processes of exclusion and as reinforcing inequality. However, there is currently little knowledge and research about how forms of anticipation, prediction and pre-emption are applied in the prison context. The chapter explores this connection by looking into current debates on establishing smart prisons. It concludes with the argument that rather than understanding prisons as removed and secluded from society, they are magnifying glasses for media-related social change and are crucial for exploring emerging-mediated temporalities.