The article focuses on big data, algorithmic analytics and machine learning in criminal justice settings, where mathematics is offering a new language for understanding and responding to crime. It shows how these new tools are blurring contemporary regulatory boundaries, undercutting the safeguards built into regulatory regimes, and abolishing subjectivity and case-specific narratives. After presenting the context for ‘algorithmic justice’ and existing research, the article shows how specific uses of big data and algorithms change knowledge production regarding crime. It then examines how a specific understanding of crime and acting upon such knowledge violates established criminal procedure rules. It concludes with a discussion of the socio-political context of algorithmic justice.
The automation brought about by big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence systems challenges us to reconsider fundamental questions of criminal justice. The article outlines the automation which has taken place in the criminal justice domain and answers the question of what is being automated and who is being replaced thereby. It then analyses encounters between artificial intelligence systems and the law, by considering case law and by analysing some of the human rights affected. The article concludes by offering some thoughts on proposed solutions for remedying the risks posed by artificial intelligence systems in the criminal justice domain. Keywords Criminal justice • Human rights • Automation • Algorithms • Artificial intelligence • Fair trial 'An AI system is a machine-based system that makes recommendations, predictions or decisions for a given set of objectives. It does so by: (i) utilising machine and/or human-based inputs to perceive real and/or virtual environments; (ii) abstracting such perceptions into models manually B A. Završnik
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