The intrusion of the predictive analytics or risk assessment tools into judicial settings is exemplified with the implementation of ‘COMPAS’ into the USA (Wisconsin, back in 2012, after years of development since the 1990s). Such algorithmic software uses machine-learning techniques that find patterns or correlations in vast quantities of ‘data’. Judges use them to assess an offender’s likelihood of recidivism while making parole, probation, bail, and sentencing decisions — who is likely to re-offend at some point in the future or to fail to appear at their court hearing.

Since the justice system already has traditional problems that require solutions…

The disclosure of victims’ images and the impact of such disclosure raise critical ethical, legal, and public policy questions. Both the event of victimization and the events that follow negatively impact the victims, and thus, create vulnerability, further victimization, traumatization, etc. Although the impacts of such publicity are manifold, we are not now going to ponder over all possible implications of it, instead to discuss the matter of disclosing the identity or name of a crime victim only from the legal point of view. …

The tension between media rights and the victim’s right to privacy gains increased attention from media professionals, legal scholars, legal practitioners, criminologists, and crime victims. Since any publication of victim data has close links to revictimization, stigmatization, traumatization, and shame for the victims of crime, the outcome of both the crime commission and the events that follow appear to primarily be negative.

In response to the victims’ privacy invasion, different countries have different positions, which mainly encompass the domestic legislative enactments, judicial precedents, and the self-regulation of the profession of journalism. …

There is ideally nothing like ‘Virtual Courts’; rather it is the changes in the place of sitting of judges and the mode of participating in the court hearing. Having disrupted court operations across the country, the pandemic prompts the courtroom to moves online and judges to conduct essential proceedings to have hearings by virtual means. Accordingly, judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers are now required to join in the court proceeding over online meeting platforms, e.g., Zoom, Meet, or Team, etc. In practice, videoconferencing technologies are used as a substitute for physical presence, and court systems hear essential cases without in-person…

Government interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) systems are remarkably growing to transform the decision-making process and public services. The Public sector across the world is thus looking forward to determining public entitlements (licensing, social benefits, and regulatory investigations), prioritizing public services, predict policing, and informing courts’ decisions regarding bail and sentencing. These systems are used to reduce costs and promote speed, efficiency, and consistency in decision-making.

But such growth of interest in automated technology becomes controversial for many implications that confront conventional norms and values being practiced for a long time in society. A number of…

AI advents are becoming omnipresent in various spheres of human life, governance, and business alike. As it is palpably understood that AI and its application like the increasing degree of autonomy facilitated by AI systems have the duality of both risks and benefits, the regulation of AI has become a central focus of the international community to ensure fair, inclusive democratic, legitimate, and less harmful use and implementation of AI technologies. As they have disruptive effects, it raises deep issues regarding their responsible utilization for common good. Even attempts to attribute legal personhood to AI-driven robots become popular efforts in…

The risk assessment algorithms are being used in the criminal court of the USA (e.g. COMPAS in Wisconsin, back in 2012, after years of development since the 1990s) is a data-driven predictive tool that uses machine-learning techniques to assess an offender’s likelihood of recidivism while making parole, probation, bail, and sentencing decisions. Such a shift in the criminal justice settings is popularly known as predictive justice; and such predictive algorithms as ‘risk assessments tools’ or ‘evidenced-based methods’ (see Malek, 2021).

But over time, it creates concerns ranging from machine bias (ProPublica, 2016; Kirkpatrick, 2016) and discrimination (Christin, Rosenblat & Boyd…

A report estimates that Google gets over 3.5 billion searches daily and internet users generate about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. As a result, the total size of digital data will be 175 zettabytes by 2025, which means that information will be more abundant than ever before. Data is now considered an asset class or new currency, sometimes compared to oil since it is harvested and refined in order to “produce” insights. Data is also not new, but a critical resource on the planet growing at an unprecedented pace that is characterised by a high degree of variety…