ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses both academic and practitioner audiences and argues that unfortunately it has fallen prey to a series of technofallacies which undermine practice. The models for rational policy development taught in schools of public administration advance the notion that in the domain of social policy, research and evaluation determine policy. In Kafka’s short story The Penal Colony, a correctional officer and his superior develop a complicated new machine capable of inflicting horrible mortal punishment on inmates. This fallacy assumes that technically based social interventions will reach their intended target with laser-like precision—the public policy equivalent of a surgical strike. Electronic monitoring and the forms that increasingly accompany it, such as video identification and drug/alcohol testing, are part of this qualitative change in monitoring. Awareness of technofallacies can sensitize policy makers to potential pitfalls, but it need not paralyze them.
