criminal justice system research paper

Criminal justice, artificial intelligence systems, and human rights

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Published: 20 February 2020
Volume 20 , pages 567–583, ( 2020 )

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Aleš Završnik 1

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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.

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1 Introduction

With the advent of big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence systems (henceforth ‘AI systems’), Footnote 1 both the assessment of the risk of crime and the operation of criminal justice systems are becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated. While authors disagree whether these technologies represent a panacea for criminal justice systems—for example by reducing case backlogs—or will further exacerbate social divisions and endanger fundamental liberties, the two camps nevertheless agree that such new technologies have important consequences for criminal justice systems. The automation brought about by AI systems challenges us to take a step back and reconsider fundamental questions of criminal justice: What does the explanation of the grounds of a judgment mean? When is the process of adopting a judicial decision transparent ? Who should be accountable for (semi-) automated decisions and how should responsibility be allocated within the chain of actors when the final decision is facilitated by the use of AI? What is a fair trial ? And is the due process of law denied to the accused when AI systems are used at some stage of the criminal procedure?

The technical sophistication of the new AI systems used in decision-making processes in criminal justice settings often leads to a ‘black box’ effect. Footnote 2 The intermediate phases in the process of reaching a decision are by definition hidden from human oversight due to the technical complexity involved. For instance, multiple areas of applied machine learning show how new methods of unsupervised learning or active learning operate in a way that avoids human intervention. In the active approaches of machine learning used for natural language processing, for instance, the learning algorithm accesses a large corpus of unlabelled samples and, in a series of iterations, the algorithm selects some unlabelled samples and asks the human annotator for appropriate labels. The approach is called active as the algorithm decides what samples should be annotated by the human based on its current hypothesis. The core idea of active machine learning is to eliminate humans from the equation. Moreover, artificial neural networks (hereafter ‘ANN’) learn to perform tasks by considering examples, generally without being programmed with task-specific rules. As such, artificial neural networks can be extremely useful in multiple areas, such as computer vision, natural language processing, in geoscience for ocean modelling, or in cybersecurity for identifying and discriminating between legitimate activities and malicious ones. They do not demand labelled samples, e.g., in order to recognise cats in images or pedestrians in traffic, but can generate knowledge about what a cat looks like on their own. The operations in machine learning approaches are not transparent even for the researchers that built the systems and while this may not be problematic in many areas of applied machine learning, as the examples below show, AI systems must be transparent when used in judicial settings, where the explainability of decisions and the transparency of the reasoning are of significant—even civilizational—value. A decision-making process that lacks transparency and comprehensibility is not considered legitimate and non-autocratic. Due to the inherently opaque nature of these AI systems, the new tools used in criminal justice settings may thus be at variance with fundamental liberties.

Lawyers must be aware, moreover, of the supra-legal context and background rationale for implementing AI systems. While some reasons may be legitimate—e.g., when AI systems facilitate access to courts to individuals that might otherwise be left on the sidelines of justice—others may be disputable and require a wider social debate that can only be held outside the judicial system. Shrinking budgets, the decreased legitimacy of the judiciary, and an overload of cases may all lead to the implementation of new solutions that information technology companies are ready to offer to governments. However, proposals for outsourcing a public service to private sector providers will trigger (or should trigger) a major political discussion which must be held in more democratic fora.

Following on from this introductory contextualisation of the automation of criminal justice, this article proceeds to an outline of the automation of crime control and answers the questions of what is being automated and who is being replaced in crime control ( Part 2 ). It then analyses encounters between artificial intelligence systems and the law through case law ( Part 3 ) and through an analysis of some of the affected human rights ( Part 4 ). Thereafter, it answers the following question: what human rights may be affected by AI systems and how? The article concludes by offering some thoughts on the proposed solutions to remedy the risks of AI systems in the criminal justice domain ( Part 5 ).

2 How does automation change crime control?

2.1 the automation of policing.

By means of CompStat (COMPuter STATistics, or COMParative STATistics), geospatial modelling for predicting future crime concentrations, or ‘hot spots’, Footnote 3 has developed into a paradigm of managerial policing employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map crime. This has been advocated as a multi-layered dynamic approach to crime reduction, quality of life improvement, personnel and resource management, and not merely a computer programme. The idea is not solely to ‘see crime’ visually presented on a map, but rather to develop a comprehensive managerial approach or a police management philosophy. As a ‘human resource management tool’, it involves ‘weekly meetings where officers review recent metrics (crime reports, citations, and other data) and talk about how to improve those numbers.’ Footnote 4

Compared to algorithmic prediction software, the CompStat system is calibrated less frequently. As a police officer from Santa Cruz (USA) reported: ‘I’m looking at a map from last week and the whole assumption is that next week is like last week […]’. Footnote 5 CompStat relies more on humans to recognise patterns. Nevertheless, it incorporated for the first time the idea of seeing how crime evolves and focusing on ‘the surface’ and not the causes of crime. In this context, Siegel argues with respect to predictive analytics: ‘We usually don’t know about causation, and we often don’t necessarily care […] the objective is more to predict than it is to understand the world […]. It just needs to work; prediction trumps explanation.’ Footnote 6 In comparison to AI analytics, its limiting factor is the depth of the information and the related breadth of analysis. The amount of data is not the problem as agencies collect vast amounts of data every day; rather, the next challenge is the ability to pull operationally-relevant knowledge from the data collected.

Computational methods of ‘predictive crime mapping’ started to enter into crime control twelve years ago. Footnote 7 Predictive ‘big data’ policing instruments took another evolutionary step forward. First, advancements in AI promised to make sense of enormous amounts of data and to extract meaning from scattered data sets. Secondly, they represented a shift from being a decision support system to being a primary decision-maker. Thirdly, they are aimed at the regulation of society at large and not only the fight against crime. (For an example of ‘function-creep’, see Singapore’s ‘total information awareness system programme’.) Footnote 8

Police are using AI tools to penetrate deeply into the preparatory phase of crime which is yet to be committed, as well as to scrutinise already-committed crimes. With regard to ex-ante preventive measures, automation tools are supposed to excavate plotters of crimes which are yet to be committed from large amounts of data. Hence, a distinction is made between tools focusing on ‘risky’ individuals (‘heat lists’—algorithm-generated lists identifying people most likely to commit a crime) Footnote 9 and tools focusing on risky places (‘hot spot policing’). Footnote 10 With regard to the second, ex-post-facto uses of automation tools, there have been many success stories in the fight against human trafficking. In Europe, Interpol manages the International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database (ICSE DB) to fight child sexual abuse. The database can facilitate the identification of victims and perpetrators through an analysis of, for instance, furniture and other mundane items in the background of abusive images—e.g., it matches carpets, curtains, furniture, and room accessories—or identifiable background noise in the video. Chatbots acting as real people are another advancement in the fight against grooming and webcam ‘sex tourism’. In Europe, the Dutch children’s rights organisation Terre des Hommes was the first NGO to combat webcam child ‘sex tourism’ by using a virtual character called ‘Sweetie’. Footnote 11 The Sweetie avatar, posing as a ten-year-old Filipino girl, was used to identify offenders in chatrooms and online forums and operated by an agent of the organisation, whose goal was to gather information on individuals who contacted Sweetie and solicited webcam sex. Moreover, Terre des Hommes started engineering an AI system capable of depicting and acting as Sweetie without human intervention in order to not only identify persistent perpetrators but also to deter first-time offenders.

Some other research on preventing crime with the help of computer vision and pattern recognition with supervised machine learning seems outright dangerous. Footnote 12 Research on automated inferring of criminality from facial images based on still facial images of 1,856 real persons (half convicted) yielded the result that there are merely three features for predicting criminality: lip curvature, eye inner corner distance, and nose-mouth angle. The implicit assumptions of the researchers were that, first, the appearance of a person’s face is a function of innate properties, i.e., the understanding that people have an immutable core. Secondly, that ‘criminality’ is an innate property of certain (groups of) people, which can be identified merely by analysing their faces. And thirdly, in the event of the first two assumptions being correct, that the criminal justice system is actually able to reliably determine such ‘criminality’, which implies that courts are (or perhaps should become) laboratories for the precise measurement of people’s faces. The software promising to infer criminality from facial images Footnote 13 in fact illuminated some of the deep-rooted misconceptions about what crime is, and how it is defined, prosecuted, and adjudicated. The once ridiculed phrenology from the nineteenth century hence entered the twenty-first century in new clothes as ‘algorithmic phrenology’, which can legitimise deep-rooted implicit biases about crime. Footnote 14 Two researchers, Wu and Zhang, later admitted that they ‘agree that the pungent word criminality should be put in quotation marks; a caveat about the possible biases in the input data should be issued. Taking a court conviction at its face value, i.e., as the ‘ground truth’ for machine learning, was indeed a serious oversight on our part.’ Footnote 15 Nevertheless, their research revealed how, in the near future, further steps along the line of a corporal focus on crime control can reasonably be expected: from the analysis of walking patterns, posture, and facial recognition for identification purposes, to analysis of facial expressions and handwriting patterns for emotion recognition and insight into psychological states.

2.2 Automation in criminal courts

Courts use AI systems to assess the likelihood of recidivism and the likelihood of flight of those awaiting trial, or of offenders in bail and parole procedures. The most analysed and discussed examples come from the USA, which is also where most such software is currently being used. Footnote 16 The Arnold Foundation algorithm, which is being rolled out in 21 jurisdictions in the USA, Footnote 17 uses 1.5 million criminal cases to predict defendants’ behaviour in the pre-trial phase. Florida uses machine learning algorithms to set bail amounts. Footnote 18

A study of 1.36 million pre-trial detention cases showed that a computer could predict whether a suspect would flee or re-offend even better than a human judge. Footnote 19 However, while this data seems persuasive, it is important to consider that the decisions may in fact be less just. There will always be additional facts in a particular case that may be unique and go beyond the forty or so parameters considered by the algorithm in this study which might crucially determine the outcome of the deliberation process. There is thus the inevitable need for ad infinitum improvements. Moreover, the problem of selective labelling needs to be considered: we see results only regarding sub-groups that are analysed, only regarding people who have been released. The data that we see is data garnered based on our decisions as regards who to send to pre-trial detention. The researchers themselves pointed out that judges may have a broader set of preferences than the variables that the algorithm focuses on. Footnote 20 Finally, there is the question of what we want to achieve with AI systems, what we would like to ‘optimise’: decreasing crime is an important goal, but not the only goal in criminal justice. The fairness of the procedure is equally significant.

Several European countries are using automated decision-making systems for justice administration, especially for the allocation of cases to judges, e.g., in Georgia, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia, and to other public officials, such as enforcement officers in Serbia. Footnote 21 However, while these cases are examples of indirect automated decision-making systems, they may still significantly affect the right to a fair trial. The study ‘alGOVrithms—State of Play’ showed that none of the four countries using automated decision-making systems for case-allocation allows access to the algorithm and/or the source code. Footnote 22 Independent monitoring and auditing of automated decision-making systems is not possible, as the systems lack basic transparency. The main concern touches on how random these systems actually are, and whether they allow tinkering and can therefore be ‘fooled’. What is even more worrying is that automated decision-making systems used for court management purposes are not transparent even for the judges themselves. Footnote 23

There are several other ongoing developments touching upon courtroom decision-making. In Estonia, the Ministry of Justice is financing a team to design a robot judge which could adjudicate small claims disputes of less than €7,000. Footnote 24 In concept, the two parties will upload documents and other relevant information, and the AI will issue a decision against which an appeal with a human judge may be lodged.

2.3 Automation in prisons

New tools are used in various ways in the post-conviction stage. In prisons, AI is increasingly being used for the automation of security as well as for the rehabilitative aspect of prisonisation. A prison that houses some of China’s most high-profile criminals is reportedly installing an AI network that will be able to recognise and track every prisoner around the clock and alert guards if anything seems out of place. Footnote 25

These systems are also used to ascertain the criminogenic needs of offenders that can be changed through treatment, and to monitor interventions in sentencing procedures. Footnote 26 In Finnish prisons the training of inmates encompasses AI training algorithms. Footnote 27 The inmates help to classify and answer simple questions in user studies, e.g., reviewing pieces of content collected from social media and from around the internet. The work is supposed to benefit Vainu, the company organising the prison work, while also providing prisoners with new job-related skills that could help them successfully re-enter society after they serve their sentences. Similarly, in England and Wales, the government has announced new funding for prisoners to be trained in coding as part of a £1.2m package to help under-represented groups get into such work. Footnote 28 Some scholars are even discussing the possibility of using AI to address the solitary confinement crisis in the USA by employing smart assistants, similar to Amazon’s Alexa, as a form of ‘confinement companions’ for prisoners. While the ‘companions’ may alleviate some of the psychological stress for some prisoners, the focus on the ‘surface’ of the problem of solitary confinement conceals the debate about the aggravating harm of such confinement, Footnote 29 and actually contributes to the legitimisation of solitary confinement penal policy. The shift from the real problem seems outrageous on its own.

3 Encounters between AI systems and the law

3.1 due process of law and ai systems in the usa.

In the American context, which is where most actual employment of AI systems in criminal justice has so far occurred, the decision on a risk assessment algorithm in the judgment in Loomis v. Wisconsin (2016), entitled Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), was a sobering one. Footnote 30 The COMPAS algorithm identified Loomis as an individual who presented a high risk to society due to a high risk of re-offending and the first instance court decided to refuse his request to be released on parole. In the appeal, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin decided that the recommendation from the COMPAS algorithm was not the sole grounds for refusing his request to be released on parole and hence the decision of the court did not violate Loomis’s due process right. By confirming the constitutionality of the recommendation risk assessment algorithm, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin neglected the strength of the ‘automation bias’. Footnote 31 By claiming that the lower court had the possibility to depart from the proposed algorithmic risk assessment, the Court ignored the social psychology and human-computer interaction research on the biases involved in all algorithmic decision-making systems, which show that once a high-tech tool offers a recommendation it becomes extremely burdensome for a human decision-maker to refute such a ‘recommendation’. Footnote 32 Decision-makers regularly rate automated recommendations more positively than neutral despite being aware that such recommendations may be inaccurate, incomplete, or even wrong. Footnote 33

In the judgment in Kansas v. Walls (2017), Footnote 34 the Court of Appeals of the State of Kansas reached the opposite finding to Loomis and decided that the defendant must be allowed access to the complete diagnostic Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) assessment, which the court relied on in deciding what probation conditions to impose on him. The Court of Appeals decided that by refusing the defendant access to his LSI-R assessment the district court denied him the opportunity to challenge the accuracy of the information that the court was required to rely on in determining the conditions of his probation. By referring to the judgment in Kansas v. Easterling , Footnote 35 the Court of Appeals decided the district court’s failure to give the defendant a copy of the entire LSI-R deprived him of his constitutional right to procedural due process in the sentencing phase of his criminal proceedings.

3.2 Human rights compliance of AI systems in the EU

AI systems have a significant impact on human rights ‘that engage state obligations vis-à-vis human rights.’ Footnote 36 Since the data deluge has reached all social domains and algorithmic systems increasingly permeate various aspects of contemporary life, Footnote 37 human rights compliance can no longer be seen as the exclusive domain of privacy and personal data protection Footnote 38 and non-discrimination and equality law. Footnote 39 Automated systems have been introduced to replace humans in the banking, insurance, education, and employment sectors, as well as in armed conflicts. They have influenced general elections and core democratic processes. Personal data protection regime is thus not sufficient to address all of the challenges as regards ensuring the compliance of AI systems with human rights. The human rights implications are then necessarily manifold, as the Committee of Experts on Internet Intermediaries (MSI-NET) at the Council of Europe Footnote 40 rightly acknowledges. The human rights that may be impacted through the use of automated processing techniques and algorithms are: (1) the right to a fair trial and due process, (2) privacy and data protection, (3) freedom of expression, (4) freedom of assembly and association, (5) the right to an effective remedy, (6) the prohibition of discrimination, (7) social rights and access to public services, and (8) the right to free elections. Moreover, as fundamental freedoms are interdependent and interrelated, all human rights are potentially impacted by the use of algorithmic technologies, e.g., in education, social welfare, democracy, and judicial systems. The developments with the AI used in social systems and domains may even ‘disrupt the very concept of human rights as protective shields against state interference.’ Footnote 41

3.2.1 Equality and discrimination

Over-policing, as the most visible example of discrimination stemming from predictive policing programmes, occurs when the police patrol areas with more crime, which in turn amplifies the need to police areas already policed. It is a prime example of the ‘vicious circle’ effect of the use of machine learning in the crime control domain. Footnote 42 However, under-policing is even more critical, as the police do not scrutinise some areas as much as others, which leads to a disproportionate feeling and experience of justice. Some types of crime are then more likely to be prosecuted than others and the central principle of legality—the requirement that all crimes be prosecuted ex officio , as opposed to the principle of opportunity, by which prosecutors decide on prosecution at their own discretion, is thus not respected. Footnote 43 The use of predictive software to ascertain the treatment of perpetrators of white-collar crimes may neglect the fact that the enculturation of such offenders did not fail in any meaningful way. Footnote 44 On the contrary, such offenders are typically distinguished and respected citizens, e.g., CEOs, physicians, judges, or university professors. Critical criminologists have shown how the definition of crime itself—and even more so the prosecution of crime—is inherently political: law enforcement agencies are forced to make ‘political’ decisions about which crime to prosecute and investigate due to limited resources and personnel. They prioritise activities either explicitly or implicitly. Inequality in predictive policing then changes the perception of what counts as ‘serious crime’ in the first place. Hedge fund operations with sub-prime mortgages packaged in ‘derivatives’ are then reduced to unfortunate ‘bad luck’, despite impoverishing large parts of the population as their savings or equity evaporate. Predictive policing software has not been able to capture this important shift.

3.2.2 Personal data protection

With regard to the implications of the use of AI systems for personal data protection, the set of barriers to the adverse impacts of AI systems includes rights, such as the explicit consent of data subjects to the processing of their personal data, the data minimisation principle, the principle of purpose limitation, and the set of rights relating to when automated decision-making is allowed. The General Data Protection Directive (henceforth GDPR) Footnote 45 offers some points of reference here. In cases of automated processing, the data controller must implement suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and legitimate interests, for instance by ensuring him or her the right to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller, to express his or her point of view, and to contest the decision (Art. 22, para. 3 of the GDPR). The GDPR includes the right of the data subject to receive ‘meaningful information about the logic involved’ in automated processing. (See Arts. 13, 14, and 15.)

Automated decisions, which produce adverse legal effects concerning the data subject or significantly affect him or her, are prohibited pursuant to Article 11 of the Law Enforcement Directive Footnote 46 (henceforth ‘Law Enforcement Directive’), unless they are authorised by Union or Member State law, which also has to ensure appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of the data subject. In line with the provisions of the Law Enforcement Directive, judicial decisions made entirely by an algorithmic tool can never be legal.

3.2.3 The right to a fair trial

The use of algorithms in criminal justice systems raises serious concerns with regard to Article 6 (concerning the right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights Footnote 47 and Article 47 of the Charter, Footnote 48 and the principle of the equality of arms and adversarial proceedings as established by the European Court of Human Rights. Footnote 49 The fair trial standards contained in Article 6 of the ECHR guarantee the accused the right to participate effectively in the trial and include the presumption of innocence, the right to be informed promptly of the cause and nature of the accusation, the right to a fair hearing and the right to defend oneself in person.

The right to effective participation may be violated in a variety of different situations, ranging from poor acoustics in the courtroom Footnote 50 to preventing the accused from being present at the trial or from examining a witness testifying against him or her. Footnote 51 The latter is also one of the minimal guarantees of a fair trial contained in Art. 6, para. 3 and normally requires that all evidence against the accused be produced in his or her presence at a public hearing, which gives the defendant an effective opportunity to challenge the evidence against him or her. Footnote 52 The right to confrontation does not apply merely to witnesses, as the term is usually understood under national law, since it has an autonomous meaning in the Convention system that goes beyond its ordinary meaning and also includes experts, expert witnesses, and victims. In any case in which the deposition serves to a material degree as the basis for the conviction of the defendant, it constitutes evidence for the prosecution to which the Convention guarantees apply. Footnote 53 The right enshrined in Article 6(3)(d) can even be applied to documentary evidence Footnote 54 and computer files Footnote 55 relevant to the criminal accusations against the defendant. Therefore, in order to ensure effective participation in a trial, the defendant must also be able to challenge the algorithmic score that is the basis of his or her conviction.

However, the right to confrontation is not absolute and may be restricted if certain conditions are met. The traditional approach of the European Court of Human Rights was that the right to a fair trial was violated if a conviction was based either solely or to a decisive degree on an uncontested statement (the ‘sole or decisive rule’). Footnote 56 However, in Al Khawaja and Tahery the Court partially departed from its previous jurisprudence, stating that the admission of untested evidence will not automatically result in a breach of Article 6 (1): when assessing the overall fairness of a trial, the European Court of Human Rights has to consider whether it was necessary to admit such evidence and whether there were sufficient counterbalancing factors, including strong procedural safeguards. Footnote 57

The problems posed by AI systems are very similar to those presented by anonymous witnesses or undisclosed documentary evidence as AI systems are opaque (as discussed in the introduction). At least some degree of disclosure is necessary in order to ensure a defendant has the opportunity to challenge the evidence against him or her and to counterbalance the burden of anonymity. Absent or anonymous witnesses, although not per se incompatible with the right to a fair trial, can only participate in a criminal procedure as a measure of last resort and under strict conditions ensuring that the defendant is not placed at a disadvantage. Such a rule should be applied to the use of AI systems used in criminal justice settings. A fair balance should be struck between the right to participate effectively in the trial, on the one hand, and the use of opaque AI systems designed to help judges arrive at more accurate assessments of the defendant’s future conduct, on the other. Footnote 58 The right to cross-examine witnesses should be interpreted so as to also encompass the right to examine the data and the underlying rules of the risk-scoring methodology. In probation procedures, such a right should entail ensuring it is possible for a convicted person to question the model applied—from the data fed into the algorithm to the overall model design.

The use of algorithmic tools in criminal procedure could also violate some other aspects of the right to a fair trial, in particular the right to a randomly selected judge, the right to an independent and impartial tribunal, and the presumption of innocence.

3.2.4 Presumption of innocence

Besides affecting many dimensions of inequality, AI decision-making systems may collide with several other fundamental liberties. Similar to ‘redlining’, the ‘sleeping terrorist’ concept used in German anti-terrorist legislation infringed upon the presumption of innocence. The mere probability of a match between the attributes of known terrorists and a ‘sleeping’ one directs the watchful eye of the state to the individual. O’Neil offers the illustrative example of the case of Robert McDaniel, a twenty-two-year-old high school student who received increased police attention due to a predictive programme’s analysis of his social network and residence in a poor and dangerous neighbourhood: ‘… he was unlucky. He has been surrounded by crime, and many of his acquaintances have gotten caught up in it. And largely because of these circumstances—and not his own actions—he has been deemed dangerous. Now the police have their eye on him.’ Footnote 59

3.2.5 Effective remedy

Automated techniques and algorithms used for crime prevention purposes facilitate forms of secret surveillance and ‘data-veillance’ that are impossible for the affected individual to know about. The European Court of Human Rights has underlined that the absence of notification at any point undermines the effectiveness of remedies against such measures. Footnote 60 The right to an effective remedy implies the right to a reasoned and individual decision. Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights stipulates that everyone whose rights have been violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority. The available remedy should be effective in practice and in law. As noted in the Study on the Human Rights Dimensions of Automated Data Processing Techniques :

Automated decision-making processes lend themselves to particular challenges for individuals’ ability to obtain effective remedy. These include the opaqueness of the decision itself, its basis, and whether the individuals have consented to the use of their data in making this decision, or are even aware of the decision affecting them. The difficulty in assigning responsibility for the decision also complicates individuals’ understanding of whom to turn to [to] address the decision. The nature of decisions being made automatic, without or with little human input, and with a primacy placed on efficiency rather than human-contextual thinking, means that there is an even larger burden on the organisations employing such systems to provide affected individuals with a way to obtain [a] remedy. Footnote 61

3.2.6 Other rights

New notions in the pre-emptive crime paradigm, such as ‘sleeping terrorist’, are in collision with the principle of legality, i.e., lex certa , which requires the legislature to define a criminal offence in a substantially specific manner. Standards of proof are thresholds for state interventions into individual rights. However, the new language of mathematics, which helps define new categories, such as ‘person of interest’, re-directs law enforcement agency activities towards individuals not yet considered ‘suspects’. The new notions being invented contravene the established standards of proof in criminal procedure.

AI systems should respect a certain set of rights pertaining to tribunals, i.e., the right to a randomly selected judge, which requires that the criteria determining which court—and which specific judge thereof—is competent to hear the case, be clearly established in advance (the rule governing the allocation of cases to a particular judge within the competent court, thus preventing ‘forum shopping’), and the right to an independent and impartial tribunal (as discussed in the section on automation in criminal courts).

4 Discussion: toward solutions

How should we design human-rights-compliant AI systems that respect the rule of law standards of the ‘analogue world’? The trend to ‘algorithms’ everything has raised the interest of policymakers. They share concern over the impact of algorithms on fundamental liberties and how to make ‘algorithms accountable’. In the European context, the Council of Europe’s European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) adopted the ‘European Charter on the Use of AI in Judicial Systems’ at the end of 2018 to mitigate the above-mentioned risks specifically in the justice sector. Footnote 62 Similar concerns can be noticed elsewhere in the world, most notably in the USA, where the New York City Council was the first to pass a law on algorithmic decision-making transparency. Footnote 63 The law sets up a task force to monitor the fairness and validity of the algorithms used by municipal agencies.

The use of AI in criminal justice and policing potentially affects several criminal procedure rights: the presumption of innocence; the right to a fair trial (including the equality of arms in judicial proceedings, the right to cross-examine witnesses); the right to an independent and impartial tribunal (including the right to a randomly selected judge); the principle of non-discrimination and equality; and the principle of legality (i.e., lex certa ), and blurs the existing standards of proof.

AI is becoming even more complex with the concept of deep learning with artificial neural networks. Further technological developments might improve this (e.g., the ongoing research on ‘explainable AI’ may remedy the opacity of current AI approaches), but for the time being transparency is not much more than an illusion.

There is a sentiment that A.I. tools will vaporise the biases and mental shortcuts (heuristics) inherent to human judgment and reasoning. This is a powerful reason why AI technologies have too quickly been given too much power to tackle and solve essentially social (and not technological) problems. Social scientists, including lawyers, must engage more intensively with computer and data scientists in order to build a human-rights-compliant approach.

Listing the relevant fundamental rights and analysing case studies may be of great benefit as regards the human rights compliance of the novel systems that may be used in the future. However, we may still find any list inadequate. When a process of deciding by automated means involves the use of automated reasoning to aid or replace a decision-making process that would otherwise be performed by humans, any human right may be affected depending on the social domain in which the systems are employed.

Listing possible actors in the chain of building and employing AI systems may also lead to all-encompassing lists of state and private sector actors. The deepening of the digital ecosystem has led to a situation where responsibilities are becoming increasingly spread to a number of dependant actors. We can map responsibility in several ways: from the obligations of states to the obligations of the private sector; from data preparation to writing algorithm code (how data is cleaned and prepared, which data is taken in and used, and which data is left out of the calculus, etc.); from algorithmic design and development to implementation processes, etc. With the deepening of the digital ecosystem it becomes much more burdensome to determine who is responsible for certain data intake and algorithmic output. The acts committed might not even reach the existing thresholds of accountability. It may even be unjust to hold an actor accountable for the consequences of activities that are generally of great benefit to a society. An actor may be generating a risk our societies are willing to accept as ‘socially permissible risk’. Footnote 64

One way forward is to learn from experiments from domains other than that of justice. In her succinct analysis of automated welfare systems in the USA, Eubanks Footnote 65 shows how removing human discretion from public assistance eligibility assessment seemed like a compelling solution to ending discrimination against African-Americans in the welfare system. If human decision-makers are biased, then moving towards eliminating humans from the decision-making loop seems logical. However, despite the fact that such a move towards automation and the elimination of the human from the decision-making process may intuitively feel like the right move to make, the experiences that Eubanks uncovered show that this may well be counterproductive. What advocates of automated decision-making systems neglect is the importance of the ability to bend the rules and re-interpret them according to social circumstances. Footnote 66 Removing human discretion thus is a double-edged sword: it can reduce human bias, but it can also exacerbate past injustices or produce new ones.

Similarly, in Turkle’s analysis of the social acceptability of computerised decision-making systems, she claims that when a system is perceived as discriminatory and one that creates racially disparate outcomes in sentencing, disadvantaged African Americans would choose a computerised judge rather than a human judge. Footnote 67 After all, human judges tend to be white middle-aged men. The ‘tough on crime’ laws that established mandatory minimum sentences for many categories of crime and removed part of judges’ discretion did make US criminal justice fairer—but all defendants were hit hard and prisons soon became overcrowded. Ironically, writes Eubanks, Footnote 68 the adoption of ‘tough on crime’ laws were a result of organising by both conservative ‘law-and-order’ types and by some progressive civil rights activists who saw the bias in judicial discretion. However, the evidence of the past thirty years is different: racial disparity in the criminal justice system has worsened, and mandatory sentencing laws and guidelines have put sentencing on autopilot. Footnote 69

Lastly, the impacts of AI systems extend beyond human rights. Their impacts may have distorting effects on the fundamental cornerstones and architecture of liberal democracies, i.e., regarding the principle of the separation of powers and the limitation of political power by the rule of law.

Among the several definitions of AI, the definition of the Commissioner for Human Rights is used herein:

‘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 or automatically; and (iii) deriving outcomes from these models, whether by human or automated means, in the form of recommendations, predictions or decisions.’

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights [ 35 ].

Pasquale [ 28 ].

Groff, Vigne [ 17 ].

Eck , Chainey , Cameron , Leitner , Wilson [ 7 ].

Goode [ 15 ].

Siegel [ 33 ], p. 90.

Saunders , Hunt , Hollywood [ 30 ].

Harris [ 18 ].

Gorner [ 16 ].

For a successful use of the latter, see Kadar , Maculan , Feuerriegel [ 20 ].

Schermer , Georgieva , Van der Hof , Koops [ 31 ].

Wu , Zhang [ 38 ].

Agüera y Arcas , Mitchell , Todorov [ 1 ].

Calling Bullshit [ 3 ].

Dewan [ 6 ].

Eckhouse [ 8 ].

Kleinberg et al . [ 23 ].

Izdebski [ 19 ].

Niiler [ 26 ].

Yan [ 39 ].

Kehl , Kessler [ 22 ].

Newcomb [ 25 ].

Mari [ 24 ].

See the award-winning book on the harm caused by ‘super-max’ prisons, including the harm resulting from solitary confinement in Shalev [ 32 ].

State v Loomis 881 N.W.2d 749 (Wis. 2016).

In appealing to the United States Supreme Court, the Court denied the writ of certiorari, thus declining to hear the case, on 26 June 2017. Loomis v Wisconsin , 881 N.W.2d 749 (Wis. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S.Ct. 2290 (2017).

Cummings [ 5 ].

Freeman [ 13 ].

State of Kansas v. John Keith Walls , 116,027, The Court of Appeals of the State of Kansas (2017).

In State v. Easterling the Kansas Supreme Court held that a convicted defendant has a constitutional right to due process at sentencing, which requires ‘the sentencing court to assure itself that the information upon which it relies to fix sentence is reliable and accurate, and [further requires] the sentencing court to ensure that the defendant have an effective opportunity to rebut the allegations likely to affect the sentence is fully applicable under these circumstances.’ State of Kansas v. David E. Easterling , 289 Kan. 470, 481, 213 P.3d 418 (2009).

Committee of Experts on Human Rights Dimensions of Automated Data Processing and Different Forms of Artificial Intelligence ( MSI-AUT ) [ 4 ], paras. 10 and 11 of the Preamble.

See Committee of Experts on Human Rights Dimensions of Automated Data Processing and Different Forms of Artificial Intelligence ( MSI-AUT ) [ 4 ].

Brkan [ 2 ]. See also: Veale , Edwards [ 37 ].

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights [ 11 ].

The Committee of Experts on Internet Intermediaries ( MSI-NET ) [ 34 ].

Ibidem , p. 32.

Ferguson [ 12 ].

Acknowledgements

The research leading to this article has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement for project “Transmaking” project (no. 734855), and the Slovenian Research Agency, research project “Human Rights and Regulation of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” (no. V5-1930).

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Završnik, A. Criminal justice, artificial intelligence systems, and human rights. ERA Forum 20 , 567–583 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12027-020-00602-0

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Criminal Justice Resources

Articles and papers/reports, selected books and law-related material, statistics/data, organizations, other sources, 50-state surveys, historical archives/research, what is happening in criminal justice, getting help, introduction.

This guide is meant to serve as a starting place for people researching criminal justice and related criminal law issues. It focuses primarly on issues related to the United States. For more criminal law sources (particularly for 1L's), be sure to check out our guides for Criminal Law and Law and Public Policy and the Kennedy School Library's Criminal Justice guide.

Subject Guide

Indexing/abstracting resources focused on criminal justice

Crime and Delinquency Abstracts Covers 1963-1972. National Council on Crime and Delinquency and National Clearinghouse for Mental Health Information. Previously,
Criminal Justice Abstracts (Harvard Key Login) Criminal Justice Abstracts provides comprehensive coverage of U.S. and international criminal justice literature including scholarly journals, books, dissertations, governmental and non-governmental studies and reports, unpublished papers, magazines, newsletters and other materials. In addition to criminal justice and criminology, topics covered include criminal law and procedure, corrections and prisons, police and policing, criminal investigation, forensic sciences and investigation, history of crime, substance abuse and addiction, and probation and parole. 1968-current. more... less... Criminal Justice Abstracts provides comprehensive coverage of U.S. and international criminal justice literature including scholarly journals, books, dissertations, governmental and non-governmental studies and reports, unpublished papers, magazines, newsletters and other materials. In addition to criminal justice and criminology, topics covered include criminal law and procedure, corrections and prisons, police and policing, criminal investigation, forensic sciences and investigation, history of crime, substance abuse and addiction, and probation and parole.
NCJRS The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) is a federally funded resource offering justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide. The NCJRS Abstracts Database contains summaries of the more than 185,000 criminal justice publications housed in the NCJRS Library collection. Most documents published by NCJRS sponsoring agencies since 1995 are available in full-text online. A link is included with the abstract when the full-text is available. Use the Thesaurus Term Search to search for materials in the NCJRS Abstracts Database using an NCJRS controlled vocabulary. This controlled vocabulary is used to assign relevant indexing terms to the documents in the NCJRS collection.

Finding legal articles and papers

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Index to Legal Periodicals and Books
Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981 (Law Login Required) covers back to 1908 more... less... This retrospective database indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic will also be covered.
More resources for finding legal articles

Multidisciplinary databases

Academic Search Premier (Harvard Login) more... less... Academic Search Premier (ASP) is a multi-disciplinary database that includes citations and abstracts from over 4,700 scholarly publications (journals, magazines and newspapers). Full text is available for more than 3,600 of the publications and is searchable.
JSTOR more... less... Includes all titles in the JSTOR collection, excluding recent issues. JSTOR (www.jstor.org) is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. For complete lists of titles and collections, please refer to http://www.jstor.org/about/collection.list.html.

Other social science databases related to criminal justice

PAIS International (Harvard Login) provides access to materials about public policy, including academic journal articles, yearbooks, books, reports and pamphlets. Items indexed include works by academics, agencies, international organizations and federal, state and local governments from 1972 to the present. PAIS covers over 1,600 journals and roughly 8,000 books each year. PAIS is international in scope and contains items in many romance languages. more... less... PAIS International indexes the public and social policy literature of public administration, political science, economics, finance, international relations, law, and health care, International in scope, PAIS indexes publications in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The database is comprised of abstracts of thousands of journal articles, books, directories, conference proceedings, government documents and statistical yearbooks.
More academic resources by field
Law and Public Policy Guide
Urban Studies Abstracts (Harvard Login) more... less... Electronic index and abstracts to the literature in the area of urban studies, including urban affairs, community development, and urban history. The backfile of this index has been digitized, providing coverage back to 1973.

Selected Journals and newsletters

Annual Review of Criminal Procedure (Georgetown) Latest issue available in print at Law School KF9619 .G46

Federal Sentencing Reporter also on Lexis

Congressional publications/government reports

CRS reports
House and Senate Hearings, Congressional Record Permanent Digital Collection, and Digital US Bills and Resolutions
Federal Legislative History
US Department of Justice
PolicyFile (Harvard Login) Abstracts of and links to domestic and international public policy issue published by think tanks, university research programs, & research organizations. more... less... PolicyFile provides abstracts (more than half of the abstracts link to the full text documents) of domestic and international public policy issues. The public policy reports and studies are published by think tanks, university research programs, research organizations which include the OECD, IMF, World Bank, the Rand Corporation, and a number of federal agencies. The database search engine allows users to search by title, author, subject, organization and keyword.
Rutgers University Don M. Gottsfredson School of Criminal Justice Gray Literature Database

Rules of Criminal Procedure

Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (Federal Rules of Practice & Procedure) Includes postings of proposed rule changes. From the uscourts.gov website.
Rulemaking (Pending Rules)(US Courts)

Model Penal Code

Criminal Law: Model Penal Code
Model Penal Code and Commentaries (official draft and revised comments) : with text of Model penal code as adopted at the 1962 Annual Meeting of the American Law Institute at Washington, D.C., May 24, 1962.
Model penal code : official draft and explanatory notes : complete text of Model penal code as adopted at the 1962 Annual Meeting of the American Law Institute at Washington, D.C., May 24, 1962.
Model Penal Code (ALI Library) Includes drafts

Selected Criminal Law Treatises, Basic Texts and Practice Manuals

Below are sources related to criminal law generally or focused on federal criminal law. For a particular jurisdiction, look for secondary sources related to that particular state. For constitutional issues, see also secondary sources related to constitutional law more generally.

United States Attorneys Manual
Legal Division Reference Book
United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual

Search and Seizure

Search and Seizure also on Lexis

Sources for criminal justice statistics generally

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Currently in transition (no longer funded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics), but still a good starting place. Data included as of 2013.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
FBI Uniform Crime Reports Annual report is Crime in the United States .
National Crime Victimization Survey See also NCVS Victimization Analysis Tool and National Crime Victimization Survey Resource Guide .
Justice Research and Statistics Association
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) Interactive Sourcebook
Sunlight Criminal Justice Project Its Hall of Justice provides a searchable inventory of publically available criminal justice data sets and research.
Arrest Data Analysis Tool underlying data from FBI's UCR (Uniform Crime Reports)
Measures for Justice
State Criminal Caseloads
United States Historical Corrections Statistics - 1850-1984 from BJS abstract: "The introductory chapter contains a brief history of Federal corrections data collection efforts. Summary information on capital punishment includes data on illegal lynchings by race and offense, regional comparisons of the number of persons executed, the number under the death sentence, the number of women executed, and the number of persons removed from the death sentence other than by execution. Prison statistics cover the number in Federal, State, and juvenile facilities; the average sentence by sex, region, race, and offense; length of sentence; and type of release. Statistics also cover facility staff, inmate-staff ratio, and jail inmates. Probation and parole statistics address the numbers under supervision (both adults and juveniles), average caseload, terminations by method of termination, the average length of parole and percent with favorable outcome, and probationer and parolee profiles. Implications are drawn for current data collection efforts, and the appendix contains limited information on military prisons."
Crime Solutions.gov

Crime Mapping

NIJ Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety

Specialized sources of statistics/data

Death Penalty Information Center
Federal Sentencing Statistics
The Counted: People Killed by Police in the US (The Guardian)
Washington Post (People Shot Dead by Police)
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Protection's (OJJDP's) Statistical Briefing Book
Stanford Open Policing Project Data on vehicle and pedestrian stops from law enforcement departments across the country.
Corporate Prosecution Registry
Police Crime Data
Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences Series
Citizen Police Data Project focused on Chicago
Chicago Data Collaborative "Collaborative members collect data from institutions at all points of contact in the Cook County criminal justice system, including the Chicago Police Department, the Illinois State Police, the Office of the State's Attorney, and the Cook County Jail."
Washington Post (Unsolved Homicide Database)
American Violence Run by the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management, the initial iteration of this databases includes city-level figures on murder rates in more than 80 of the largest 100 U.S. cities. According to the website, the second iteration will feature neighborhood-level figures on violent crime in 30-50 cities with available data.
Police Data Initiative "This site provides a consolidated and interactive listing of open and soon-to-be-opened data sets that more than 130 local law enforcement agencies have identified as important to their communities, and provides critical and timely resources, including technical guidance and best practices, success stories, how-to articles and links to related efforts." See map of participating agencies" .

Other sources for statistics

American Fact Finder
See Judicial Workload, Jury Verdicts and Crime Statistics generally
Harvard Dataverse more... less... The Harvard-MIT Data Center is the principal repository of quantitative social science data at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The majority of its holdings are available to Harvard and MIT affiliates directly via its web site through its search engine. Graduate students and faculty with a Harvard or MIT Library card can check out paper code books from libraries at either institution, under Harvard's and MIT's reciprocal borrowing agreement. In addition, the Data Center has negotiated a special agreement for undergraduates and summer graduate students, who are not covered by the standard agreement.
Proquest Statistical Insight (Harvard Login) more... less... Proquest Statistical Insight is a bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts the statistical content of selected United States government publications, state government publications, business and association publications, and intergovernmental publications. The abstracts may also contain a link to the full text of the table and/or a link to the agency's web site where the full text of the publication may be viewed and downloaded.
Data.gov Includes data from the Department of Justice and other agencies.
Data Citation Index (Web of Science)
Historical Statistics of the United States (Harvard Login) more... less... Presents the U.S. in statistics from Colonial times to the present. Included are statistics on U.S. population, including characteristics, vital statistics, internal and international migration. Statistics on work and welfare, economic structure and performance, economic sectors, and governance and international relations. Tables may be downloaded for use in spreadsheets and other applications. This electronic database is also in a five volume hard copy set.

Books, reports and articles about criminal justice statistics and records

Data and Civil Rights: Criminal Justice Primer Part of larger conference on Data and Civil Rights http://www.datacivilrights.org/ ; includes write-up from conference http://www.datacivilrights.org/pubs/2014-1030/CriminalJustice-Writeup.pdf
Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics (2009)
Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault
Modernizing Crime Statistics: Report 1: Defining and Classifying Crime

Case Processing and Court Statistics

Federal Criminal Case Processing Statistics
State Court Caseload Statistics See also Data Collection: Court Statistics Project and CSP Data Viewer .
Statistics and Reports (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts)

Criminal Records

Search Systems A mega search site with links to public records by state, county, city and also by record type. A great place to start your research. more... less... From the website: We've located, analyzed, described, and organized links to over 55,000 databases by type and location to help you find property, criminal, court, birth, death, marriage, divorce records, licenses, deeds, mortgages, corporate records, business registration, and many other public record resources quickly, easily, and for free.
BRB Publications BRB Publications maintains a page with links to more than 300 local, state and federal websites offering free access to public records.
National Sex Offender Public Registry From the US Department of Justice. This site also has links to all 50 states, District of Columbia, US territories, and tribal registry websites.
FBI's Sex Offender Database websites An alternate source for state level sex offender databases.
FBI's Bureau of Prisons Inmate Finder
VINELink VINELink is the online version of VINE (Victim Information and Notification Everyday), the National Victim Notification Network. This service allows crime victims to obtain timely and reliable information about criminal cases and the custody status of offenders 24 hours a day.

Research Organizations and Advocacy Groups

Vera Institute of Justice
Agencies, Think Tanks and Advocacy Groups
Urban Institute-Crime and Justice
National Center for State Courts
National Conference of State Legislatures
Innocence Project
Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice (UPenn Law)
Capital Jury Project

Professional Organizations

American Bar Association (Criminal Justice section)
National District Attorneys Association
American Correctional Association
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

Research guides from other libraries

MSU Libraries, Criminal Justice Resources
Georgetown Law Criminal Law and Justice Guide
Harvard Kennedy School Library, Criminal Justice
Criminal Law Prof Blog
White Collar Crime Prof Blog

50-State-Surveys

ABA Collateral Consequences Database
National Conference of State Legislatures-Civil and Criminal Justice

HIstorical Archives/Projects

National Death Penalty Archives
ProQuest History Vault (Harvard Login)

Updates from popular criminal justice resources

New books in the library, new books in general.

New Books Received at Rutgers

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Home » 500+ Criminal Justice Research Topics

500+ Criminal Justice Research Topics

Criminal justice is a complex and critical field that encompasses various aspects of crime prevention, law enforcement, legal proceedings, and punishment. Research plays a crucial role in understanding and addressing the challenges and opportunities in this field. From studying the causes and consequences of crime to exploring the effectiveness of policies and interventions, there is a wide range of fascinating and important criminal justice research topics to explore. Whether you are a student, a scholar, a practitioner, or a curious citizen, delving into the world of criminal justice research can deepen your knowledge, sharpen your critical thinking skills, and contribute to creating a safer and fairer society. In this post, we will introduce some of the most compelling and relevant criminal justice research topics that you may find intriguing and informative.

Criminal Justice Research Topics

Criminal Justice Research Topics are as follows:

The effectiveness of community policing in reducing crime rates
The impact of body-worn cameras on police accountability and public trust
The causes and consequences of police use of excessive force
The role of race and ethnicity in police-citizen interactions and perceptions
The effectiveness of diversion programs in reducing recidivism among juvenile offenders
The impact of mandatory minimum sentencing on crime rates and prison populations
The challenges and opportunities of restorative justice as an alternative to punitive justice
The role of mental health and substance abuse treatment in reducing criminal behavior
The ethics and implications of using predictive policing algorithms
The impact of private prisons on the criminal justice system and society
The effectiveness of victim-offender mediation in reducing the harm of crime
The prevalence and causes of wrongful convictions and the implications for justice
The role of media in shaping public perceptions of crime and justice
The effectiveness and fairness of the death penalty as a form of punishment
The role of international law in addressing transnational crimes such as terrorism and human trafficking
The impact of the War on Drugs on drug use, drug-related crime, and public health
The effectiveness of gun control laws in reducing gun violence and crime rates
The role of technology in enhancing or challenging the criminal justice system, such as DNA analysis or facial recognition software
The prevalence and causes of domestic violence and the effectiveness of intervention programs
The impact of sentencing disparities based on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status
The role of plea bargaining in the criminal justice system and the implications for justice
The effectiveness of sex offender registries and notification laws in reducing sex crimes
The impact of pretrial detention on defendants’ rights and outcomes
The role of community-based corrections in reducing recidivism and promoting reentry
The ethics and implications of using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for surveillance and law enforcement
The effectiveness and implications of using risk assessment tools in pretrial decision-making
The prevalence and impact of hate crimes and the challenges of prosecuting them
The role of eyewitness testimony in criminal trials and the reliability of memory
The effectiveness of drug courts in reducing drug-related crime and improving outcomes for offenders
The impact of race and ethnicity on the administration of the death penalty
The role of juries in the criminal justice system and the factors that affect their decisions
The effectiveness and ethics of using informants in criminal investigations and prosecutions
The prevalence and impact of cybercrime and the challenges of investigating and prosecuting it
The effectiveness of juvenile justice reforms in promoting rehabilitation and reducing recidivism
The impact of community-based policing on police-citizen relations and trust
The role of social media in shaping perceptions of crime and justice
The effectiveness of prison education and vocational training programs in promoting rehabilitation and reducing recidivism
The prevalence and impact of human rights abuses in the criminal justice system, such as torture or discrimination
The effectiveness of gang prevention and intervention programs in reducing gang-related crime
The role of implicit bias in the criminal justice system and its impact on outcomes
The impact of solitary confinement on mental health, behavior, and reentry outcomes
The impact of police body cameras on public trust and police accountability.
The effectiveness of diversion programs for juvenile offenders.
The impact of community policing on crime reduction
The use of predictive policing in law enforcement
The impact of decriminalizing marijuana on crime rates
The role of mental health professionals in the criminal justice system
The effectiveness of de-escalation training for police officers
The impact of technology on police surveillance practices
The relationship between gender and sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system
The relationship between poverty and crime
The effectiveness of restorative justice programs in reducing recidivism
The impact of the War on Drugs on mass incarceration
The use of cognitive-behavioral therapy in offender rehabilitation
The effectiveness of diversion programs for people with substance use disorders
The role of implicit bias in jury selection
The impact of police officer stress on use of force incidents
The use of big data in criminal investigations and decision-making
The effectiveness of restorative justice practices in school disciplinary policies
The relationship between mental illness and homelessness in the criminal justice system
The impact of mandatory minimum sentences on juvenile offenders
The role of drug courts in the criminal justice system
The effectiveness of offender reentry programs for people with disabilities
The impact of restorative justice programs on victims of crime
The use of therapeutic jurisprudence in the criminal justice system
The relationship between race and ethnicity and the use of force by private security personnel
The effectiveness of educational programs in correctional facilities
The impact of eyewitness identification procedures on wrongful convictions
The role of community-based policing in reducing crime rates
The use of predictive analytics in bail decisions
The effectiveness of correctional education programs on recidivism
The impact of immigration enforcement policies on immigrant communities’ trust in law enforcement
The relationship between mental health and juvenile detention
The use of biometrics in criminal investigations and identification
The effectiveness of mental health courts in reducing recidivism among people with co-occurring disorders
The impact of gender and sexuality on hate crime victimization and reporting
The role of cultural competence in police training
The use of risk assessment tools in pretrial detention decisions
The effectiveness of community supervision programs for people with substance use disorders
The impact of social and economic policies on criminal justice outcomes
The relationship between race and ethnicity and criminal case outcomes
The use of therapeutic communities in correctional facilities
The effectiveness of specialized courts for domestic violence cases
The impact of gun violence on public safety and crime rates
The role of eyewitness memory and recall in criminal investigations and trials
The use of DNA evidence in criminal investigations and exoneration
The effectiveness of probation and parole programs for people with disabilities
The impact of victim impact statements on sentencing decisions
The relationship between criminal justice policies and racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration rates
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles in law enforcement
The effectiveness of community-based restorative justice programs for juvenile offenders
The impact of public defender workload on criminal case outcomes
The role of community activism and advocacy in criminal justice reform
The use of risk assessment tools in school disciplinary policies
The effectiveness of family-focused interventions in reducing juvenile recidivism
The impact of police officer race and ethnicity on use of force incidents
The relationship between race and ethnicity and prosecutorial decision-making
The use of virtual reality simulations in police training
The effectiveness of mental health diversion programs for people with traumatic brain injuries
The impact of juvenile life without parole sentences on individuals and society.
The use of drones in criminal investigations
The effectiveness of community-based alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders
The impact of wrongful convictions on the criminal justice system
The role of implicit bias in criminal justice decision-making
The use of risk assessment tools in child welfare investigations
The effectiveness of offender reentry programs in reducing recidivism
The impact of hate crimes on marginalized communities
The relationship between mental health and the use of force by police officers
The use of body language analysis in criminal interrogations
The effectiveness of community policing strategies in building trust between police and communities
The impact of race on police use of force and police brutality
The role of prosecutorial discretion in the criminal justice system
The use of algorithms in pretrial detention decisions
The effectiveness of victim-centered approaches to sexual assault investigations
The impact of domestic violence on child custody decisions
The relationship between social media and cybercrime
The use of facial recognition technology in law enforcement
The effectiveness of police officer training programs on cultural sensitivity and bias reduction
The impact of the school-to-prison pipeline on youth
The role of mental health courts in diversion programs
The use of virtual reality technology in criminal justice education and training
The effectiveness of crisis intervention teams in responding to mental health crises
The impact of immigration policies on crime reporting and victimization rates in immigrant communities
The relationship between police department size and use of force incidents
The use of predictive analytics in parole and probation supervision
The effectiveness of juvenile justice system diversion programs for LGBTQ+ youth
The impact of bail reform on pretrial detention rates and recidivism
The role of trauma-informed care in the criminal justice system
The use of artificial intelligence in forensic investigations
The effectiveness of prison entrepreneurship programs in reducing recidivism
The impact of COVID-19 on the criminal justice system
The relationship between mental health and incarceration rates
The use of social network analysis in criminal investigations
The effectiveness of drug testing and monitoring programs for probationers and parolees
The impact of mandatory minimum sentences on drug offenses
The role of the media in shaping public perceptions of crime and the criminal justice system
The use of body-worn cameras in courtroom proceedings
The effectiveness of mental health diversion programs for veterans involved in the criminal justice system
The impact of race and ethnicity on the plea bargaining process
The relationship between police department diversity and community trust
The use of crime mapping in law enforcement strategies
The effectiveness of animal therapy programs in correctional facilities
The impact of the death penalty on families of victims and offenders
The role of prosecutorial misconduct in wrongful convictions.
Racial disparities in the use of capital punishment
The effectiveness of electronic monitoring as an alternative to incarceration
The role of restorative justice in reducing recidivism
The relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior
The effectiveness of drug courts in reducing drug-related offenses
The impact of body-worn cameras on police behavior and citizen complaints
The use of risk assessment tools in sentencing and release decisions
The effectiveness of boot camp programs for juvenile offenders
The use of eyewitness testimony in criminal trials
The impact of victim-offender mediation on the criminal justice system
The relationship between education level and criminal behavior
The effectiveness of parole and probation in reducing recidivism
The use of artificial intelligence in criminal justice decision-making
The role of public defenders in the criminal justice system
The impact of mandatory minimum sentences on the prison population
The effectiveness of therapeutic courts for individuals with substance abuse disorders
The impact of social media on the reporting of crimes and public perception of crime
The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in reducing recidivism
The impact of mental health courts on the criminal justice system
The role of community service in reducing recidivism
The relationship between domestic violence and gun ownership
The effectiveness of diversion programs for individuals with mental illnesses
The impact of sentencing guidelines on judicial discretion
The use of police body language in detecting deception during interviews
The relationship between incarceration and employment opportunities post-release
The effectiveness of community-based supervision programs for released offenders
The impact of the war on drugs on the criminal justice system
The role of race and ethnicity in plea bargaining decisions
The use of risk assessment tools in juvenile justice
The effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy in correctional facilities
The impact of restorative justice on the victims of crime
The relationship between gun laws and gun violence rates
The effectiveness of pretrial diversion programs for individuals with mental illnesses
The role of reentry programs in reducing recidivism
The impact of mandatory arrest policies in domestic violence cases
The use of polygraph tests in criminal investigations
The relationship between gang membership and criminal behavior
The effectiveness of drug treatment courts in reducing recidivism
The impact of solitary confinement on mental health and behavior
The role of gun buyback programs in reducing gun violence
The relationship between substance abuse and child abuse
The effectiveness of victim impact panels in reducing drunk driving
The impact of juvenile detention on mental health and behavior
The use of forensic science in criminal investigations
The relationship between race and wrongful convictions
The effectiveness of prison education programs in reducing recidivism
The impact of police militarization on community trust and safety
The relationship between race, ethnicity, and police use of force.
The impact of mandatory minimum sentencing laws on incarceration rates.
The effectiveness of community policing in reducing crime rates.
The relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior.
The role of gender in criminal justice sentencing and outcomes.
The impact of the war on drugs on incarceration rates and drug use.
The effectiveness of restorative justice programs in reducing recidivism.
The impact of solitary confinement on mental health and rehabilitation.
The relationship between poverty and crime rates.
The role of technology in modern policing and criminal justice.
The effectiveness of drug courts in reducing drug-related crime.
The relationship between immigration and crime rates.
The impact of mandatory arrest policies in cases of domestic violence.
The effectiveness of victim-offender mediation in reducing recidivism.
The role of social media in modern crime and policing.
The impact of police militarization on community trust and safety.
The effectiveness of rehabilitation programs for incarcerated individuals.
The relationship between gun ownership and violent crime.
The impact of wrongful convictions on individuals and the criminal justice system.
The role of race and ethnicity in jury selection and decision-making.
The effectiveness of mental health courts in reducing recidivism.
The relationship between education and crime rates.
The impact of body-worn cameras on police officer behavior and decision-making.
The effectiveness of drug treatment programs in reducing recidivism.
The relationship between domestic violence and gun ownership.
The impact of the death penalty on deterrence and sentencing outcomes.
The role of implicit bias in policing and criminal justice decision-making.
The effectiveness of community-based reentry programs for formerly incarcerated individuals.
The relationship between crime rates and social inequality.
The impact of predictive policing on crime rates and community trust.
The effectiveness of probation and parole programs in reducing recidivism.
The relationship between mental health and policing.
The impact of police unions on police accountability and reform efforts.
The role of the media in shaping public perceptions of crime and justice.
The effectiveness of pretrial diversion programs in reducing incarceration rates.
The relationship between police use of force and police training.
The impact of mandatory minimum drug sentences on racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
The effectiveness of juvenile detention alternatives in reducing recidivism.
The relationship between mass incarceration and economic inequality.
The impact of police body language on civilian compliance.
The role of community organizations in crime prevention and intervention.
The effectiveness of reentry programs for people with disabilities.
The relationship between mental health and criminal justice reform.
The impact of immigration policies on community safety and trust.
The role of prosecutorial discretion in the criminal justice system.
The effectiveness of job training programs for formerly incarcerated individuals.
The relationship between race and drug policy.
The impact of pretrial detention on case outcomes and incarceration rates.
The effectiveness of diversion programs for offenders with mental health issues
The prevalence and impact of police corruption and the challenges of rooting it out
The role of victim impact statements in the criminal justice system and their impact on sentencing
The impact of social inequality on crime rates and the criminal justice system
The role of political ideology in shaping criminal justice policy and practice
The effectiveness of rehabilitation and reentry programs for adult offenders
The prevalence and impact of sexual harassment and assault within the criminal justice system
The role of the Fourth Amendment in regulating police searches and seizures
The effectiveness of restorative justice practices in addressing campus sexual assault
The impact of mass incarceration on families and communities
The ethics and implications of using artificial intelligence in criminal justice decision-making
The role of bail reform in promoting justice and reducing pretrial detention
The prevalence and impact of police misconduct and accountability mechanisms
The effectiveness of drug policy reform in reducing drug-related harm and promoting public health
The impact of globalization on transnational crimes and the challenges of international cooperation
The role of prosecutorial discretion in shaping criminal justice outcomes
The prevalence and impact of white-collar crime and the challenges of prosecution
The role of public defenders in ensuring access to justice for indigent defendants
The effectiveness of mental health courts in diverting mentally ill offenders from the criminal justice system
The impact of the criminal justice system on immigrant communities and the challenges of immigrant detention and deportation
The role of forgiveness in restorative justice and its implications for healing and reconciliation
The effectiveness of alternative dispute resolution in reducing court congestion and promoting justice
The prevalence and impact of hate speech and the challenges of regulating it
The role of public opinion in shaping criminal justice policy and practice
The effectiveness of community supervision in reducing recidivism and promoting reentry
The impact of the criminalization of homelessness on vulnerable populations
The role of community activism and advocacy in promoting criminal justice reform
The effectiveness of therapeutic jurisprudence in promoting rehabilitation and well-being
The prevalence and impact of police militarization and its implications for public safety and civil liberties
The role of eyewitness identification procedures in criminal investigations and the reliability of identification evidence
The effectiveness of harm reduction strategies in reducing drug-related harm and promoting public health
The impact of the criminal justice system on Indigenous communities and the challenges of decolonizing justice
The role of hate crime legislation in promoting justice and reducing hate-motivated violence
The effectiveness of police training programs in reducing racial and ethnic bias and promoting cultural competence
The prevalence and impact of gun violence and the challenges of gun control policy
The role of the Eighth Amendment in regulating cruel and unusual punishment
The effectiveness of problem-solving courts in addressing complex social issues and promoting justice
The impact of the criminal justice system on LGBTQ+ communities and the challenges of achieving equality and inclusivity
The role of victim services in promoting healing and well-being for crime victims
The effectiveness of drug testing and monitoring programs in promoting rehabilitation and reducing recidivism
The prevalence and impact of prison gangs and the challenges of managing them
The role of implicit bias in eyewitness identification and the implications for justice
The effectiveness of diversion programs for offenders with substance abuse issues
The impact of social media on crime reporting and law enforcement
The role of mental health diversion programs in reducing mass incarceration and promoting treatment
The prevalence and impact of wrongful convictions of innocent people and the challenges of exoneration
The relationship between immigration and crime rates
The impact of drug courts on drug-related offenses and recidivism rates
The use of restorative justice practices in the criminal justice system
The effectiveness of reentry programs for people released from prison
The use of polygraph tests in criminal investigations and court proceedings
The impact of bail amounts on pretrial detention and case outcomes
The relationship between gun ownership and crime rates
The effectiveness of mental health screening and assessment for individuals involved in the criminal justice system
The use of virtual courtrooms in criminal proceedings
The impact of juvenile detention on mental health and future criminal behavior
The relationship between poverty and crime rates
The use of eyewitness identification procedures in criminal investigations and court proceedings
The effectiveness of community service programs as a sentencing alternative
The role of racial profiling in law enforcement practices
The use of risk assessment tools in sentencing and parole decisions
The impact of mandatory reporting laws on child abuse and neglect cases
The relationship between parental incarceration and children’s wellbeing
The effectiveness of diversion programs for drug-related offenses
The use of cognitive-behavioral therapy in offender rehabilitation programs
The impact of solitary confinement on mental health and recidivism rates
The relationship between social capital and crime rates
The use of DNA evidence in criminal investigations and court proceedings
The effectiveness of crisis response teams in reducing police use of force incidents
The role of race and ethnicity in jury selection and decision-making
The impact of court fines and fees on individuals involved in the criminal justice system
The relationship between education and crime rates
The use of risk assessment tools in domestic violence cases
The effectiveness of reentry programs for individuals with substance use disorders
The impact of court-appointed attorneys on case outcomes and access to justice
The role of victim impact statements in sentencing decisions
The use of mental health courts for individuals with co-occurring disorders
The effectiveness of court-mandated treatment programs for drug offenders
The impact of gender on the sentencing and treatment of offenders
The relationship between drug policy and crime rates
The use of forensic psychology in criminal investigations and court proceedings
The effectiveness of cognitive interviewing techniques in witness testimony
The impact of the media on public perceptions of the criminal justice system
The relationship between neighborhood characteristics and crime rates
The use of body-worn cameras in police-community interactions
The effectiveness of reentry programs for individuals with intellectual disabilities
The impact of mandatory minimum sentences on sentencing disparities
The role of mental health providers in prisons and jails
The use of civil asset forfeiture in law enforcement practices
The effectiveness of diversion programs for individuals with mental illness involved in the criminal justice system
The impact of police militarization on community trust and police accountability
The relationship between unemployment and crime rates
The use of artificial intelligence in identifying and preventing human trafficking
The effectiveness of reentry programs for individuals with traumatic brain injuries
The impact of community-based alternatives to policing on public safety and crime rates.
The impact of the militarization of police on community relations
The effectiveness of restorative justice practices in reducing recidivism
The relationship between socioeconomic status and juvenile delinquency
The impact of police department culture on officer behavior
The role of community courts in addressing low-level offenses
The effectiveness of reentry programs for people who were formerly incarcerated
The impact of body-worn cameras on police officer behavior and community perceptions
The relationship between mental illness and police use of force
The use of neuroscience in criminal sentencing
The effectiveness of gun control policies in reducing gun violence
The role of alternative dispute resolution in the criminal justice system
The use of biometrics in criminal investigations
The effectiveness of gang prevention and intervention programs
The impact of domestic violence on employment and economic stability
The use of artificial intelligence in criminal investigations and sentencing
The role of implicit bias in eyewitness identification
The use of drug courts in addressing drug addiction and drug-related crimes
The effectiveness of reentry programs for juvenile offenders
The impact of social media on crime and victimization
The relationship between mental health and incarceration of women
The use of surveillance technologies in correctional facilities
The effectiveness of victim-offender mediation programs
The impact of prosecutorial discretion on plea bargaining outcomes
The role of mental health assessments in competency to stand trial determinations
The use of biographical information in criminal investigations
The effectiveness of diversion programs for people with mental illness
The impact of police body language on community perceptions
The relationship between criminal justice policies and racial disparities in healthcare
The use of geospatial analysis in predicting crime patterns
The effectiveness of community service programs in reducing recidivism
The impact of court fines and fees on people with low incomes
The role of neuroscience in detecting deception
The use of technology in victim advocacy and support services
The effectiveness of juvenile justice diversion programs for LGBTQ+ youth
The impact of parental incarceration on children and families
The relationship between race and juvenile justice system involvement
The use of facial recognition technology in correctional facilities
The effectiveness of community-based mental health services in reducing incarceration rates
The impact of prison labor on employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated people
The role of community-based restorative justice in addressing hate crimes
The use of predictive analytics in child welfare investigations
The effectiveness of alternative sentencing programs for drug-related offenses
The impact of immigration enforcement policies on crime reporting in immigrant communities
The relationship between implicit bias and jury decision-making
The use of technology in improving language access in the criminal justice system.
The impact of police body language on citizen perceptions and trust
The effectiveness of police academy training on officer decision-making in high-pressure situations
The role of technology in the spread of human trafficking
The relationship between mental health and probation and parole revocation rates
The use of community courts in addressing quality of life offenses
The effectiveness of prisoner reentry programs on family reunification and support systems
The impact of public defender caseloads on the quality of legal representation
The role of implicit bias in jury selection and decision-making
The use of diversion programs for juveniles involved in prostitution
The effectiveness of community supervision programs for offenders with serious mental illness
The impact of immigration enforcement policies on the criminal justice system
The relationship between recidivism rates and prison education and vocational programs
The use of body-worn cameras in prison settings
The effectiveness of alternative dispute resolution in reducing court congestion
The impact of prison labor on reentry and recidivism rates
The role of risk assessment tools in parole and probation decision-making
The effectiveness of drug courts in addressing substance abuse and recidivism
The impact of solitary confinement on mental health and behavior in prison
The relationship between domestic violence and firearm possession
The use of mental health diversion programs for veterans involved in the criminal justice system
The effectiveness of juvenile drug court programs on reducing recidivism
The impact of private prisons on inmate rehabilitation and public safety
The role of implicit bias in pretrial detention decisions
The use of GPS monitoring in pretrial release and probation supervision
The effectiveness of offender education and job training programs in reducing recidivism
The impact of collateral consequences on reentry and recidivism rates
The use of crisis intervention teams in responding to mental health emergencies
The effectiveness of community-based alternatives to detention for juveniles
The role of public opinion in shaping criminal justice policy
The effectiveness of police body-worn cameras in reducing police misconduct and excessive use of force
The impact of incarceration on family dynamics and relationships
The relationship between access to legal representation and case outcomes
The use of community supervision and support programs for individuals with substance use disorders
The impact of pretrial detention on case outcomes and recidivism rates
The role of prosecutorial discretion in plea bargaining and sentencing
The use of facial recognition technology in criminal investigations and surveillance
The effectiveness of problem-solving courts in addressing specialized criminal cases
The impact of prison privatization on inmate rights and access to services
The relationship between race, gender, and criminal justice outcomes
The use of mental health courts in diversion programs
The effectiveness of community policing strategies in building trust and reducing crime rates
The impact of police militarization on community perceptions and police-citizen interactions
The role of forensic evidence in criminal investigations and court proceedings
The use of artificial intelligence in predicting criminal behavior and recidivism.
The use of restorative justice in the criminal justice system
The impact of police militarization on community policing efforts
The effectiveness of diversion programs for individuals with substance use disorders
The relationship between economic inequality and crime rates
The use of artificial intelligence in pretrial risk assessment
The impact of mandatory minimum sentences on non-violent drug offenses
The impact of the War on Drugs on communities of color
The relationship between mental health and probation violations
The effectiveness of drug courts in reducing recidivism rates
The role of eyewitness testimony in wrongful convictions
The use of facial recognition technology in criminal investigations and prosecutions
The effectiveness of diversion programs for juvenile offenders
The impact of probation and parole supervision on recidivism rates
The relationship between police use of force and mental health disorders
The use of predictive analytics in criminal sentencing
The effectiveness of reentry programs for individuals with mental illness
The impact of bail systems on low-income individuals and communities
The role of implicit bias in sentencing decisions
The use of social media in criminal investigations
The impact of mandatory sentencing on judicial discretion
The relationship between drug addiction and property crime
The use of predictive analytics in risk assessment for pretrial release
The effectiveness of substance abuse treatment programs in correctional facilities
The impact of police body-worn cameras on police-citizen interactions
The role of forensic evidence in wrongful convictions
The use of drones in border patrol and immigration enforcement
The effectiveness of community supervision programs for individuals with mental illness
The impact of mandatory sentencing on the prison population and corrections costs
The relationship between gang activity and violent crime
The use of artificial intelligence in criminal investigations and evidence collection
The effectiveness of juvenile diversion programs for first-time offenders
The impact of prosecutorial misconduct on wrongful convictions
The role of implicit bias in police use of force incidents
The use of risk assessment tools in pretrial detention decisions for juvenile defendants
The effectiveness of prison education programs in reducing recidivism rates
The impact of racial profiling on policing practices and community trust
The relationship between homelessness and criminal behavior
The use of predictive analytics in identifying and preventing cybercrime
The effectiveness of mental health treatment programs for incarcerated individuals
The impact of the school-to-prison pipeline on students of color
The role of community-based programs in reducing crime rates and recidivism
The use of neuroscience in criminal investigations and sentencing decisions
The effectiveness of diversion programs for individuals with co-occurring disorders
The impact of solitary confinement on mental health and recidivism rates.
The effectiveness of diversion programs for offenders with substance use disorders
The impact of judicial discretion on sentencing outcomes
The relationship between access to legal representation and sentencing disparities
The use of body-worn cameras in reducing police misconduct and brutality
The impact of bail practices on pretrial detention and racial disparities
The relationship between police unions and police accountability
The effectiveness of community supervision in reducing recidivism
The impact of solitary confinement on mental health outcomes for inmates
The relationship between criminal justice policies and racial wealth inequality
The use of risk assessment tools in sentencing decisions
The effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences in reducing crime rates
The impact of victim impact statements on sentencing outcomes
The relationship between criminal justice policies and environmental justice
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) in law enforcement
The effectiveness of juvenile justice diversion programs for at-risk youth
The impact of police militarization on community relations
The relationship between immigration enforcement and public safety
The use of artificial intelligence in predicting recidivism risk
The effectiveness of police training on de-escalation tactics
The relationship between the criminal justice system and income inequality
The use of geographic profiling in criminal investigations
The effectiveness of mental health courts in reducing incarceration rates
The impact of mandatory arrest policies on domestic violence victims
The relationship between criminal justice policies and public health outcomes
The use of body-worn cameras in reducing false accusations against police officers
The effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy in reducing domestic violence recidivism
The impact of race and ethnicity on police use of force during traffic stops
The use of predictive analytics in parole and probation revocation decisions
The effectiveness of offender treatment programs for intimate partner violence offenders
The impact of prison education programs on post-release employment and recidivism
The relationship between prison labor and modern-day slavery
The use of predictive modeling to prevent child abuse and neglect
The effectiveness of community courts in reducing recidivism rates
The impact of community-based organizations on crime prevention
The relationship between mental health and substance use disorders in the criminal justice system
The use of mobile forensic technology in criminal investigations
The effectiveness of gender-responsive programming in reducing female recidivism rates
The impact of anti-immigrant sentiment on policing in immigrant communities
The relationship between police legitimacy and public trust
The use of data analytics in law enforcement resource allocation
The effectiveness of reentry programs for people with disabilities
The impact of police misconduct on wrongful convictions
The relationship between restorative justice and school discipline
The use of location tracking technology in the criminal justice system
The effectiveness of anti-bias training for law enforcement officers
The impact of drug decriminalization on public safety and health.

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Psychiatr Psychol Law
v.27(5); 2020

The effects of the justice system on mental health

Miguel clemente.

Department of Psychology, Universidad de a Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

Dolores Padilla-Racero

Anyone involved in legal proceedings will warn you that a long-drawn-out legal battle will drain your mental health. This study aimed to assess the psychological effects of being processed by the justice system. The sample consisted of 360 subjects, residents in Spain. Were administered a questionnaire on the experience of contact with the justice system, a temporal perspective inventory, locus of control, psychological reactance, coping strategies, health self-efficacy, and psychosomatic symptomology. Results revealed significant differences between plaintiffs and defendants, although it was also confirmed that both parties showed greater pessimism about the future. So, the former were more pessimistic about the future, used poor strategies for protecting their health, and had less empathy. In contrast, coincidentally in some variables, defendants had a more negative outlook on life, and in general more psychosomatic symptomology. The health of the group with the longest exposure to legal proceedings was the most deteriorated.

Introduction

Health and justice system.

Anyone enduring lengthy legal proceedings, in particular as a defendant or individuals at risk of losing a loved one (e.g. child custody disputes), will complain that long drawn-out legal proceedings have seriously affected their health. Notwithstanding, to our knowledge, no study has assessed the impact on health, and in particular the mental health of plaintiffs and defendants, of the justice system itself.

While our research focuses on civil family law procedures, this section conducts a general bibliographic review, referring to concepts such as victim, or aggressor and victim of abuse. However, the empirical study detailed below is strictly civil.

Although research has primarily focused on the victim’s mental health (i.e. the issue of deteriorating mental health has been studied in criminal proceedings, when an aggressor attacks a victim; in general, these are studies of the victims’ sequelae, mainly due to post-traumatic stress disorder), and the impact of the legal proceedings themselves has been overlooked. Moreover, as considered from the victim’s perspective, the term secondary victimisation has been coined and has prompted research by Gutiérrez de Piñeres-Botero, Coronel, and Andrés-Pérez ( 2009 ). Victims of an offence often become victims of the justice system and endure traumatic experiences that are product of the system itself (Pearson, 2007 ). This phenomenon has been found to affect victims, families, friends, communities, carers and aggressors (Palacio, 2001 ).

From the aggressor’s point of view, role theory as proposed by symbolic interactionism claims that individuals who commit an offence are branded delinquents or aggressors by the justice system, which significantly increases the probability of further conviction, even when no further offences are committed (for example, see Shim & Shin, 2016 ; Theimann, 2016 , etc.)

However, not all legal proceedings are confined to criminal law, and child custody disputes are a good example of the difficulty of distinguishing the victim from the aggressor. Likewise, neither should the term plaintiff be used as synonymous to victim, nor the term defendant to refer to the aggressor. This ambiguity has spurred studies such as Gardner’s ( 1985 ), parental alienation syndrome (PAS), which asserts that the plaintiff is the aggressor, a claim that lacks any scientific empirical support (see Clemente & Padilla-Racero, 2015a , 2015b ).

Secondary victimisation has been defined from the point of view of the consequences involved. Most studies refer to secondary victimisation as the distress endured by a victim of an offence due to the negative psychological, social, legal and financial impact of being processed by the justice system and the victims’ relationship with the criminal legal system (Gutiérrez de Piñeres-Botero, Coronel, & Andrés-Pérez, 2009 ). These authors add that this is a frustrating clash between the victim’s legitimate expectations and institutional reality, involving a lack of comprehension of the psychological and physical suffering caused by the criminal act, and leaving the victims desolate and insecure and generating a loss of faith in the justice system when it comes to responding to their needs. This perspective can also be found in Kreuter ( 2006 ), Landrove ( 1998 ) and Soria (1998). This concept has also been understood from another perspective as secondary victimisation, which is usually more negative than primary victimisation, and can lead to increasing the harm caused by the crime by adding more psychological or patrimonial damage (Berrill & Herek, 1992 ; Beristain, 1994 , 1999 ; García-Pablos, 1988 ; Landrove, 1998 ; Wemmers, 1996 ).

Albertin ( 2006 ) has pointed out that secondary victimisation arises from the relationship between the victim and social institutions (social services, health care workers, the justice system, mass media, etc.), which occasionally fail to comply with ethical standards for the treatment of victims (Beristain, 1999 ). The terms ‘re-victimisation’ and ‘secondary victimisation’ refer to malpractice in the psychological or medical treatment of victims, mostly by unqualified or unscrupulous professionals (Rozanski, 2013 ).

The act of resorting to the justice system entails a stressful situation for the victim: the forced reliving of the trauma endured during the incident. Moreover, the needs of victims for preserving their mental health (social support, understanding, regaining control and power over their lives, having a sympathetic listener, respect, privacy, etc.) often come into conflict with legal requirements (e.g. victims must give testimony in public, the burden of proof is on the credibility of the victim’s testimony, compliance with rules and proceedings, victims are forced to relive their traumas in order to challenge the testimony of their aggressors, etc.). Although the last issue has been examined by Campbell ( 2005 ) and Herman ( 2003 ), to our knowledge, no study has assessed the effects of the justice system on the stress levels of aggressors.

Besides suffering from severe psychological trauma, victims sustain physical injuries and incur damages and financial loss resulting from the criminal offence (Annan, 2011 ; García-Pablos, 1988 ). Moreover, the criminal offence is re-experienced and perpetuated in the victim’s mind. The feeling of powerlessness in the face of the aggressor, as well as the fear of the assault recurring, may trigger acute post-traumatic stress disorder, prolonged episodes of anxiety, depression, and so on. Psychological exhaustion may eventually lead to unfounded reactions intended to explain the traumatic event they have suffered, giving rise to feelings of guilt and self-blame for the offence. Moreover, society in general often stigmatises the victim, and far from responding with solidarity and justice, victims are often treated unsympathetically and are viewed with mistrust and suspicion (Clemente, 1992 ). Victimisation leads to social alienation and social exclusion as well as to increasing the risk of successive incidents of victimisation, making the victim of the criminal offence even more vulnerable. In the short term, victimisation modifies the victims’ habits and lifestyles, negatively affecting their everyday domestic lives, their interpersonal relationships and their working and social lives (Clemente, 1992 ). Some authors (Greenberg & Cropanzano, 2001 ; Latham, 2006 ; Vardi & Weitz, 2004 ) have made an important distinction that can help reduce the impact of secondary victimisation: the interactional application of justice and of the legal procedures themselves.

The interactional application of justice refers to the formal procedures enforced by an organisation (George & Brown, 2004 ; Greenberg & Cropanzano, 2001 ; Latham, 2006 ; Vardi & Weitz, 2004 ) and consists of two types. The first is information, which refers to the use of appropriate data to explain each phase of the legal proceedings, given that when individuals receive the adequate information concerning legal proceedings, they perceive they are being treated fairly, impartially and equally. Thus, this underpins both veracity and justification. The second type, interpersonal treatment, underscores the impartial treatment received during legal proceedings, respect for how the parties should be treated, and fostering concern and sensitivity towards others – that is, empathy, good manners and respect for others.

We find this of particular importance, as uncertainty about future events is a great source of stress. It generates learned helplessness and therefore worsens users’ mental health. We believe that for justice system users to know how the criminal process works is a way to avoid these problems, especially learned helplessness (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014 ).

The South Korean experience

In South Korea a ‘Citizen Participatory Trial System’ was implemented in 2008. The system is based on ‘Committees for the Citizens’ Participation in the Judicial System’, where citizens form part of juries in trials of female victims of sexual abuse. Legal proceedings designed to prevent secondary victimisation entail installing all-female juries. Several authors have proposed a range of measures aimed at optimising the efficacy of the system in order to improve victims’ mental health. For instance, Kim and Lee ( 2015 ) proposed three measures to improve the system, with the third one referring to strategies for preventing anxiety in victims whose identity has been disclosed in court and the stressful situation of reliving their trauma during the trial. In practice, the aim was to design a system akin to plea-bargaining. One of the programmes designed to prevent secondary victimisation was the ‘Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner’ or SANE (Maier, 2012 ). The work of Maier ( 2012 ) reflects the opinions of 39 nurses participating in that programme. This work is of great importance despite the small number of professionals interviewed (39 nurses), as it refers to the perception of the criminal jurisdiction of the justice system and of the civil jurisdiction of women who were allegedly sexually abused by the health system. These professionals were asked to what extent female victims of alleged sexual abuse feel intimidated when the whole process of care for them begins in hospitals, with the notification to the justice system to investigate the possible crime. The data collected showed how, according to the nurses, what bothered them the most was the criminal investigation carried out by the police and the courts of criminal jurisdiction, mainly because the possible veracity of the abuse was challenged. The second issue that made them most uncomfortable was the abuse verification system itself, from a health viewpoint, as it reminded them of the aggression. And finally, they were uncomfortable about the impact of the events that occurred concerning the need to change their civil status, as most of them were married, and the traumatic event led them to file for divorce, opening civil judicial proceedings.

The Korean system based on the recommendations of several authors has applied several improvements such as victim protection, a policy that has often been implemented without any empirical data to justify the practice (Lee, 2014 ).

The justice system as a generator of health problems and a form of institutional harassment

In every society, there are disadvantaged groups where, on the one hand, society is prioritised, and, on the other hand, the system of administration of justice is prioritised. Under this assumption the work of Athwal and Burnett ( 2014 ) applied to racism was carried out. These authors report how members of certain groups, mainly related to the submerged economy, are ‘disappearing’ within the justice system because, firstly, as has just been established, there is low-level harassment of society in general, but also, secondly, of the justice system itself, which either does not act or acts in a way that could be called low level, leaving most crimes unpunished (files are lost, prosecutors do not classify them, etc.).

It is important to identify how the justice system stigmatises everyone, the aggressors and the victims. This is demonstrated in the work of Stotzer ( 2014 ), which analyses 33 studies that focus on the treatment of the justice system toward its users. These works highlight how lawbreakers suffer harassment, unlawful arrest, assault and in general a great lack of protection by the system, with the agents of such attacks being themselves members of the justice system. But the opposite is also true: victims are also harassed and discriminated by the system. The conclusion is clear: the police and justice system, indirectly and in a ‘low-level’ form, assault both aggressors and the victims of abuse.

On the other hand, the way the justice system treats those who come there as victims affects their mental health. This is shown, for example, in two investigations. Bell, Street, and Stafford ( 2014 ), working with 1562 reservists from the United States military who were sexually abused by other members of their organisation, show how these people’s mental health, especially their post-traumatic stress level, improved when they were adequately treated by the justice system, and their statements were taken appropriately and respectfully; and, on the contrary, the mental health of those who were treated disrespectfully by the justice system worsened. A similar work was performed by Smith ( 2012 ), but referring to the prison system, with similar results. Therefore, in general, we can say that when the victims of crime and the offenders are treated appropriately by the justice system, their mental health improves. But unfortunately, the opposite is also true.

Perhaps one of the possible explanations of this discrimination, from a legal point of view, can be found in the concept of Silbey ( 2005 ) of legal consciousness, which tries to join three elements: consciousness, ideology and hegemony. In general, this theory draws a clear distinction between the theoretical concept of the law and the way it acts when put into practice. It could be argued that law enforcement is often iatrogenic; that is, while at the general level, it is intended to defend the victims, in its individual application, it frequently harms the victims. Silbey wonders how it is possible for people to allow the existence of a legal system that, despite its promises of equal treatment, systematically reproduces inequality.

Another phenomenon that highlights this harassment of the citizen by the legal system is that of the ‘perverse rule’, created by Fernández-Dols ( 1993 ), who defined it as an explicit and unfulfillable rule. It is a rule that can only be fulfilled in ideal or exceptional terms (see also Oceja & Fernández-Dols, 1992 ). Thus, the police can sanction whoever breaks a rule because they have broken the law, despite the fact that all of society fails to follow it, because they do not even know about its existence. For example, it is very easy to punish a restaurant or a café, as it will always violate some rules; so, if the police want to impose a punishment on an establishment, they can always do so. In everyday life, it is possible to detect perverse rules in many contexts. Perverse rules are often imposed on all groups of a social subsystem or at least on the group without authority, using coercion by a hierarchically superior social system.

Although most studies have employed a qualitative methodology, a few empirical studies have been undertaken (Aranda-López, Montes-Berges, Castillo-Mayén, & Higueras, 2014 ; Patterson, 2011 ). With the qualitative methodology, studies of gender violence found that women who perceived the justice system negatively also tended to have intense feelings of secondary victimisation caused by the system. In comparison, women who relied less on the criminal justice system and the police to prevent further assault expressed more satisfaction with the justice system. In addition, there was a homeostatic phenomenon whereby women with more family support expressed more satisfaction with the police system.

In line with the findings of the present study, Calton and Cattaneo ( 2014 ) concluded that legal proceedings perceived as fair improved the victims’ mental health, and the victims stated they would use the justice system again if they were involved in another offence. Two variables were significantly modified by the perception of being treated fairly in legal proceedings: quality of life increased, and depression decreased. It has been shown that these studies were not generalisable to victims of sexual offences (Laxminarayan, 2012 ).

As most studies have focused almost exclusively on the victim, and particularly on secondary victimisation, this study aimed to assess the psychological effects on both plaintiffs and defendants of being processed by the justice system. We wanted to address this case because both parties have been plaintiffs and defendants at some time. What we have done is to include the interviewees in one category or another according to their qualification after the first lawsuit filed at the judicial level. And, as already stated, in almost all cases, the first lawsuit was civil; then, the criminal jurisdiction had to act, and then the case returned to the civil jurisdiction. In this study health was characterised in terms of plaintiff or defendant. Moreover, the litigants’ psychosocial health was compared to that of non-litigants to determine differences. It was hypothesised that both plaintiff and defendant would exhibit psychosocial health problems, and that the deterioration in health would be worse in the defendants. A further conjecture was that the health of litigants (subjects actually involved in legal proceedings) would be worse than the health of non-litigants.

We would like to express our conviction that scientific procedures must be used in order to determine whether there is a deterioration of mental health. An example of this can be found in the ‘Legal Harassment Scale’ (LHS) of Clemente, Padilla-Racero, Espinosa, Reig-Botella, and Gandoy-Crego ( 2019 ), ideal for detecting how the justice system can impair people’s psychological health.

Participants

The sample consisted of 360 participants; 53% women and 47% men; mean age 36 years (age range= 18–81 years). A total of 52.2% of participants stated they had been involved in legal proceedings as plaintiffs, and 32.8% as defendants (both questions were asked separately, the exclusion criterion being participants who were simultaneously involved in legal proceedings both as plaintiffs and as defendants). The mean number of trials was 0.87 (minimum 0, and maximum 7). Most participants had been involved in proceedings concerning changes in the non-custodial parent’s visitation regime, to a fairly lesser extent in changes in guardianship and to a small extent in child sexual abuse proceedings involving requests for changes of guardianship and visitation regimes. All participants resided in the autonomous community of Galicia (north-western Spain). The data were gathered by interviewers, who requested the collaboration of, and obtained informed consent from, individuals being processed by the law courts. Thus, the sample was incidental, as it would have been unfeasible and complicated to obtain a random one. All participants were informed of the aims of the study. Data were gathered from October to December 2017.

Instruments

A questionnaire was designed, consisting of the following series of tests:

Sociodemographic data, and data on the experience of contact with the justice system.
Zimbardo’s Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI): a multidimensional measure of time orientation, which allows individuals to fix their own past, present and future. It can be classified as a personality test consisting of 56 items rated on a 5-point Likert-type response format. Both the validity and reliability indices were high. The Spanish version adapted by Díaz-Morales ( 2006 ) was used to determine the following factors: negative past, hedonist present, future, positive past and fatalist present. These factors correspond with those proposed by Zimbardo and Boyd ( 1999 ). A negative past expresses a pessimistic, negative and unfavourable view of the past; a hedonist present implies an attitude towards time and life based on pleasure – for example, the pleasure of performing high-risk or high-adrenaline sports and exciting experiences; the future is linked to responsibility, achievement oriented, meeting deadlines and concern for the consequences of different types of behaviour; a positive past implies nostalgia and enthusiasm for the past; and the fatalist present reveals a desperate and defenceless attitude, a negative attitude towards the future and life in general (a lack of orientation in time).
Levenson’s ( 1973 ) I–E Locus of Control Scale. This scale is a measure of locus of control, which was initially designed by Rotter ( 1966 ) and was adapted and validated in Spanish by Perez-García ( 1984 ). The Spanish version of Romero-García and Pérez ( 1985 ) was used in this study. This scale measures subjects’ internality (I) and externality (E) with two factors: internal and external. Moreover, externality was measured in terms of either ‘other powerful people’ or chance. The scale consists of 24 items scored on a 6-point Likert-type response format. Internality refers to individual personal beliefs about one’s own skills, characteristics, attitude and behaviour in determining success or failure in life – that is, being in control of one’s destiny. In comparison, externality attributes success or failure in life to outside forces (the belief that powerful people control one’s life), whereas chance externality is the belief that luck, fate or divine destiny determine one’s life. Global externality encompasses both types of externality. Studies on the reliability and validity of the scale have obtained positive results (Hong & Ostini, 1989 ; Hong & Page, 1989 ; Pérez-García, Sanjuán, Bermúdez, & Sánchez-Elvira, 2002 ).
The Psychological Reactance Scale (PRS) of Hong and Page ( 1989 ). This concept was supported by Brehm’s ( 1966 ) claim that perceived threats to freedom trigger a motivational impulse in people, which has been referred to as psychological reactance. Individuals who perceive their freedom is threatened or who fear that loved others may be lost believe that by acting unlawfully they are restoring their freedom. Wortman and Brehm ( 1975 ) described four components of reactance: expected freedom, implied threat/the force of threat, importance of freedom and implications for others’ rights. Hong and Page’s scale consists of two components: affective and cognitive, with eight and six items, respectively. In this study, the Spanish version of this scale, adapted by Pérez-García et al. ( 2002 ), was used.
Moos’ Coping Strategies Scale (CSS). Moos views stress as a manifestation of the imbalance between external and internal demands as perceived by the individual, and the availability of resources for coping (Frydenberg, 1997 ; Lazarus, 1991 ). Moos’ Coping Responses Inventory (CRI) was adapted for adolescents: the CRI–Youth (CRI–Y; Moos, 1993 , 1995 ). In the present study, the Spanish version of the CRI–Y, adapted by Ongarato, De la Iglesia, Stover, and Fernandez-Liporace ( 2009 ), was used. The original version of the questionnaire was composed of 48 items, grouped into eight dimensions. The version used in this study consisted of four scales: Coping for Cognitive Approximation, Coping for Behavioural Approximation, Coping for Cognitive Avoidance and Coping for Behavioural Avoidance. The psychometric properties of this scale have been corroborated (Rial-Boubeta, De La Iglesia, Ongarato & Fernández-Liporace, 2011 ).
The Scale of Self-efficacy on Health (SEH). The SEH consists of 10 items scored on a 4-point Likert-type response format, and all the options were drafted by the authors of this paper. The scale was based on the self-efficacy tests of Baessler and Schwarzer ( 1996 ), and Sanjuán, Pérez-García, and Bermúdez-Moreno ( 2000 ), but only items on health issues were included.
Derogatis’ Symptom Checklist–90–Revised (SCL–90–R). The SCL–90–R is composed of 90 questions measuring several dimensions: Somatisation, Obsessive-Compulsive, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Depression, Anxiety, Hostility, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Ideation and Psychoticism. The global severity index (GSI) of psycho-somatisation were calculated using this checklist. The psychometrically tested (see Derogatis & Cleary, 1977a , 1977b ; Derogatis, Rickels, & Rock, 1976 ), adapted Spanish version was used in this study (Derogatis, 2002 ).

After designing the questionnaire, a team of interviewers was responsible for collecting data from plaintiffs and defendants at the law courts of the four provinces of the autonomous community of Galicia (NW Spain). Once the data had been gathered, an Excel data matrix was created, prior to exporting it to the IBM SPSS-22 statistical package. Statistical t tests were performed to compare independent samples in the following groups:

Subjects who had previously been in legal proceedings as defendants (defendants) versus subjects who had never been in legal proceedings as defendants (non-defendants).
Subjects who had previously been in legal proceedings as plaintiffs (plaintiffs) versus subjects who had never been in legal proceedings as plaintiffs (non-plaintiffs).
Subjects who were in legal proceedings (litigants) versus subjects who were not in legal proceedings (non-litigants).

No reliability or validity tests on the instruments employed in this study were undertaken, given that the psychometric properties have been confirmed to be satisfactory by the empirical data.

Initially, a statistical t test was performed to compare defendants versus non-defendants. As shown in Table 1 , significant results (a minimum bilateral confidence score of 95% – that is, p ≤ .05) were found in a large number of variables: being negative (the defendants’ scores were lower than the non-defendants’ scores), hedonist present (defendants did not enjoy the present time); future (defendants were more pessimistic about the future); fatalist present (defendants obtained lower scores in perceiving the present as a problem); global time perspective (defendants were more negative); external control by other powerful people (defendants rejected the belief that what happens to them depends on powerful others); global external control (defendants were globally less external than non-defendants); affective and cognitive reactance (defendants did not like to resort to behaviours that led to problems); self-efficacy in health (defendants were not efficacious at protecting their own health); interpersonal sensitivity (defendants lacked mutual understanding); depression (defendants were less depressed); anxiety (defendants had less anxiety); hostility (defendants had less hostility); phobic anxiety (defendants had less phobic anxiety); paranoid ideation (defendants had less paranoid ideation); psychoticism (defendants scored lower); and GSI global psychosomatic indices (defendants had lower global psychosomatic indices). Moreover, defendants exhibited the highest global reactance scores. In short, globally, defendants were pessimistic about the future, used poor strategies for protecting their own health and exhibited less empathy and interpersonal sensitivity.

T test comparison of the means of defendants versus those of non-defendants.

Note: GSI = global severity index of the Symptom Checklist–90–Revised (SCL–90–R).

As for the comparison between plaintiffs versus non-plaintiffs, the results in Table 2 show that plaintiffs perceived the future more negatively and the past positively, and obtained higher scores in fatalist present, external control by chance, both global affective and cognitive reactance and psychoticism. Thus, plaintiffs were globally found to have a more negative outlook on life, and presented more psychosomatic symptomology.

T test comparison of the means of plaintiffs versus those of non-plaintiffs.

Note: GSI = global severity index of the Symptom Checklist–90–Revised (SCL–90–R).

As shown in Table 3 , the comparison between subjects who at the time of data collection were not involved in legal proceedings (non-litigants) versus subjects who were involved in legal proceedings (litigants) revealed that the litigants scored lower on hedonist present and on behavioural coping. Thus, the health of litigants deteriorated more than the health of non-litigants, but this was observed in only a few variables.

T test comparison of the means of litigants versus those of non-litigants.

Discussion and conclusion

The results obtained are summarised in Table 4 . Variables that were non-significant in any of the analyses were eliminated, and a negative sign was added if the defendant, plaintiff or litigant groups obtained lower scores than the non-defendant, non-plaintiff or non-litigant groups, respectively. Conversely, if the non-defendant, non-plaintiff and non-litigant groups obtained lower scores, a positive sign was added.

Summary of results.

Note: GSI = global severity index of the Symptom Checklist–90–Revised (SCL–90–R). Negative sign = defendant, plaintiff or litigant groups obtained lower scores than non-defendant, non-plaintiff or non-litigant groups, respectively; positive sign = non-defendant, non-plaintiff or non-litigant groups obtained lower scores than defendant, plaintiff or litigant groups, respectively.

Significant differences were found between defendants and non-defendants. Defendants were more pessimistic about the future, used poor strategies for protecting their own health and showed less empathy. Likewise, plaintiffs also had health problems: they had a more negative outlook on life, and, on the whole, they presented more psychosomatic symptomology. Thus, both defendants and plaintiffs presented health problems. Moreover, the comparison between litigants and non-litigants showed that health was more deteriorated in the litigants, but only in a few specific variables (hedonist present and behavioural coping) This underscores that: (a) being processed by the justice system leads to both plaintiffs’ and defendants’ deteriorated mental health; and (b) the longer the exposure to the justice system (according to the number of trials), the greater the deterioration of health. The defendants presented greater fluctuations in psychosocial health, and the plaintiffs showed fewer effects. In short, the results corroborated the hypothesis that being processed by the justice system resulted in deterioration of the mental health of both plaintiffs and defendants.

The results of this study have corroborated the findings of Gutiérrez de Piñeres-Botero et al. ( 2009 ), Palacio ( 2001 ), and Pearson ( 2007 ), as well as the studies of Shim and Shin ( 2016 ) and Theimann ( 2016 ), who analysed victims (i.e. the plaintiff) separately from the aggressor (i.e. the defendant). In short, the justice system affected the mental health of plaintiffs and defendants.

Harassment has become a type of violence especially studied in psychology. However, there are two types of harassment in the legal system that have barely been investigated: the use of the legal and justice system to harass a person, and the treatment that the system employs towards its users. Both types of harassment can be referred to as ‘legal harassment’ and contribute to victimising people who either are attacked by others or, because of going to the justice system, face institutional abuse. This article deals with both possibilities and exemplifies how this type of harassment occurs very particularly in family law.

From the point of view of the justice system, few investigations have addressed this issue, and, yet, the user of the justice system is often victimised by the system itself, either as a plaintiff or as a defendant, although common sense tells us that the effect of harassment should be more manifest in the defendant. Unfortunately, there are hardly any works on this, so the present investigation is intended to remedy this issue.

One of the main limitations of this study was the small and incidental sample. This field of research covers very intimate and sensitive issues, and individuals are reluctant to collaborate providing data. Moreover, a third group of plaintiffs and defendants of the justice system who were simultaneously plaintiffs and defendants, a common scenario in family law, was not analysed. Thus, further research is required to assess the effects of legal proceedings on the mental health of people involved in the justice system who are simultaneously plaintiffs and defendants.

Acknowledgements

All authors have contributed equally to the development of this research and to the elaboration of the manuscript. All authors agree with the final version of this manuscript and assume responsibility for it.

This research was not pre-registered. The data used in the research are available and can be obtained by emailing the corresponding author. The materials used in the research are available and can be obtained by emailing the corresponding author.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest.

Miguel Clemente has declared no conflicts of interest

Dolores Padilla-Racero has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the present study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional Ethic Committee of the Universidade da Coruna (Spain) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study

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Criminal Justice Research Paper

This sample criminal justice research paper features: 7200 words (approx. 24 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 27 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Introduction

Overview of the criminal justice process, the investigatory process, the adjudicatory stage, the criminal trial, plea bargaining, racial aspects of the criminal justice process, the relationship between substance and procedure.

Bibliography

The criminal justice process consists of the steps taken by public officials to administer criminal punishment. Criminal justice experts distinguish between the investigative and adjudicative phases of the procedure. Before an investigation can begin, cases must be brought to the notice of officials; however, the boundaries between the two stages are sometimes unclear, and the same individuals may be involved in both investigation and adjudication. Despite these significant caveats, the label of investigative/adjudicative remains highly helpful.

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In general, the investigation stage is an inquisitorial procedure administered by police, whereas the adjudicatory stage is an adversarial process administered by judges and attorneys. Occasionally, prosecutors take the lead in the investigation, and occasionally, the police investigation continues even after the adversarial adjudication process has commenced. The contrast between police investigations done prior to a suspect being formally charged with an offense in court and the adjudication of those charges provides a sound overview of the criminal justice system, despite the occasional inaccuracy of this sweeping definition.

Although the term inquisitorial has certain negative connotations in Anglo-American legal culture, it refers only to the absence of named defendants in this instance. Obviously, there can be no adversary procedures without a defendant. During the earliest stages of an inquiry, when authorities may be uncertain as to whether a crime has been committed or the identity of the culprit, it is equally evident that no adversarial criminal justice procedure can exist. Many long-standing criminal justice problems, such as those regarding police interrogation and eyewitness identification hearings, include arguments on when the inquiry should end and the adjudicatory process should begin.

An essential distinction between investigative and adjudicative processes must be made at the outset. Obviously, it is conceivable to delegate judicial authority to the police by combining the investigation and trial. In such a system, the police, whether officially or clandestinely, have the authority to employ violence such as arrest and search in order to bring about a fair trial. In addition, they have the authority to punish alleged criminals without judicial authorization. Such systems, to which the term “police state” is aptly applied, have existed in numerous locations and eras. Even in cultures with a strong political commitment to due process, police occasionally penalize people without a trial. Consequently, the distinction between inquiry, which for practical reasons must be assigned to a paramilitary executive agency, and adjudication, which is made more rather than less important by the existence of a paramilitary police force, is not arbitrary. It is the best institutional system that humans have devised so far for defending themselves from private crime without submitting to arbitrary state authority.

Criminal justice is not the only recognized method of coercive social control. After a civil, as opposed to a criminal, hearing, individuals who are mentally ill and a threat to themselves or others may be committed to institutions indefinitely. The state may seize contraband and the fruits or instruments of crime, such as an airplane used to carry drugs, in both civil and criminal forfeiture actions. When permitted by statute or judicial judgment, the government, like private individuals, may file a civil case seeking punitive damages. The criminal justice system is the most comprehensive and famous form of coercive social control, but it is by no means the only one.

The criminal justice system in the United States is extremely variable. Federal practice differs from state practice, and state practice differs from state practice. Different police departments employ distinct investigative methods, and different court systems follow distinct protocols. Following will be an abundance of words such as “typically,” “commonly,” and “generally.” It would be impossible to make a statement about the American criminal justice system that could not be qualified by an exception. Despite this, the following description may be informative, given that real people only go to jail in exceptional circumstances defined by the laws of a single jurisdiction, which may deviate from the norm in a number of significant ways.

Typically, an investigation into a crime contains three components. First, public officials, typically the police, must become aware that a crime has been or will be committed. Second, law enforcement officials must identify the suspect or suspects. Finally, they must collect and maintain evidence that the courts will accept as establishing beyond a reasonable doubt the suspect’s guilt.

There are two fundamental ways for law enforcement to learn about criminal activity. Officers may personally observe the crime or its evidence, or they may receive a report or complaint from a third party. Surprisingly many crimes are found by police by direct observation, despite the fact that it may appear that this occurs quite infrequently. Police on patrol may see suspicious behavior, such as a vehicle circling slowly in an after-hours commercial area with a license plate belonging to a recently reported stolen vehicle. In addition, a large number of crimes, including prostitution, illicit firearms, and drug offenses, do not involve anyone willing to file a police report. Despite the fact that these cases frequently involve cooperating informants, effective investigation rely heavily on undercover police personnel.

Citizen reports are another important source of crime information. Not all crimes are reported to the police, and not all recorded crimes actually occurred or occurred as the initial informant indicated. Rarely are false reports motivated by retaliation or insurance fraud. The failure to report crimes is significantly more common.

There are a lot of reasons why crime victims and witnesses may not come forward. They may view the likelihood of apprehending the criminal as insufficient to warrant their time in reporting and testifying. They may fear retribution from the perpetrator or those acting on his behalf. They may be related to the criminal or on friendly or intimate terms with him. When researchers estimate the crime rate by surveying sample populations and asking how often the respondents have been victimized (victimization surveys), the rate of actual crime appears to be significantly higher than the rate of reported crime. There is consensus that homicide and auto theft are the most often reported crimes. Additionally, it is well acknowledged that sexual assault and domestic violence are underreported.

Once the police have decided that a crime has been committed, they must identify the criminal (or perpetrators). They must also collect court-admissible evidence of guilt. Although these two procedures are closely linked, they are not identical, as some of the evidence police frequently utilize to identify the likely perpetrator is inadmissible in court. For instance, police investigations frequently rely significantly on the statements of informants based on what they have heard rather than what they have personally observed. Even if the informant were willing to testify (which is frequently not the case), the hearsay rule would preclude the informant from testifying about what he or she has overheard others say about the crime. The criminal history of individuals previously arrested or convicted for acts similar to the one under investigation is another crucial example. The police often consider the records of potential suspects, although character-evidence standards normally prohibit courts from admitting such evidence.

Even when the evidence at hand is admissible in court, the authorities must consider its probative value when picking potential suspects. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable and may provide police with wholly wrong descriptions of the perpetrator. Rarely, people may confess to crimes they did not commit. Far more frequently, people assign crimes in which they participated to others who were not involved or who were involved to a lesser extent. False alibi and other similar excuses can be used by witnesses to protect the guilty. Physical evidence is not susceptible to fraud, but it may be misleading in other ways, such as when illegal substances are discovered in a vehicle with multiple passengers who accuse each other of sole possession.

Faced with these obstacles and under severe time and budget constraints, the police must pick prospective suspects. Due to the fact that police departments frequently evaluate the performance of their officers based on the clearance rate (the proportion of reported crimes that result in an arrest), the police may have an incentive to focus on the most likely suspect, regardless of how unlikely his guilt is in comparison to that of unknown persons. On the other hand, the police may have very strong suspicions about the suspect’s identity, yet be unable to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt with acceptable evidence.

The Supreme Court of the United States has interpreted the Constitution to govern certain aspects of police investigations. The police may not detain people on the street for investigation without objective evidence of criminal activity; they may not search homes without a judicial warrant based on probable cause; they may search vehicles based on a determination of probable cause, without first obtaining a judicial warrant; and they may not arrest an individual without probable cause to believe the individual has committed an offense. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S.

Almost entirely, these prohibitions are implemented through the rejection of evidence gathered in violation of the applicable constitutional requirements. Police that are more concerned with seizing a drug shipment than prosecuting the courier may have less incentive to acquire a warrant before searching for the contraband. As long as their testimony is likely to be accepted in court, police who are willing to lie about how they collected evidence have no motivation to comply with the regulations.

Thus, the police investigation follows a dialectical or give-and-take process, in which investigators create a hypothesis regarding the identity of the perpetrator and collect evidence tending to substantiate that hypothesis until fresh information emerges exonerating the suspect. Without a knowledge of the prospective criminals’ identity, there would be no way to discriminate between proof and entirely irrelevant data. The police do not have the means to begin each inquiry by determining the alibi of every person in the city. However, the selection of suspects affects the collected evidence; if the police focus on Smith as the perpetrator, Jones will not be required to stand in a lineup.

“Realistic” fiction of the police-procedural sort, whether in print or on screen, captures the essence of this procedure reasonably well. However, police fiction dramatically exaggerates the epistemic authority of the investigative procedure. The fictitious police never miss a suspect. In reality, only approximately 20% of all reported offenses are cleared by arrest.

Observers have always known that not all arrested individuals are guilty, but DNA testing has revealed that the investigation process is more susceptible to false positives than previously supposed. A quarter of conclusive DNA tests conducted at the request of the police nationwide exonerate the criminal. In circumstances when tangible evidence permits testing, this is excellent news for the innocent (and bad news for the guilty). In the vast majority of situations where physical evidence does not permit scientific verification of identity, however, police investigations frequently identify the wrong person as the perpetrator. This is not an encouraging trend.

In a society where the vast majority of crimes go unreported and only around one-fifth of reported crimes result in an arrest, it is evident that law enforcement officers must make difficult decisions regarding the allocation of their limited resources. Neighborhoods must be assigned patrol officers. Certain types of crimes must be assigned detectives and undercover agents. Should undercover detectives focus on drug laws or prostitution laws? How strongly should police patrol efforts be concentrated in a high-crime area? Residents (usually impoverished and frequently disproportionately racial minorities) may be denied police protection unjustly if there are insufficient police officers. There may be either the perception or the actuality of discriminating overenforcement if there are too many police officers.

The model of a police-dominated inquiry followed by judicial adjudication must be changed to incorporate instances in which prosecutors lead the investigation. Typically, prosecutorial investigations involve “white collar” crimes of an economic or political character, or organized crimes involving narcotics, gambling, and loan sharking. Prior to pressing charges, prosecutors in white-collar cases typically conduct witness interviews and take sworn testimony before an investigative grand jury. In the case involving organized crime, prosecutors must collaborate closely with the police or federal agents. The prosecutors assist the cops’ petitions for warrants for electronic surveillance and negotiate immunity for informants, while the officers recruit or plant informants and carry out the arrests and searches.

In the United States, the adjudicatory procedure differs substantially from one jurisdiction to another, although being generally comparable across the country. The majority of instances begin with an arrest by the police. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution necessitates a timely finding of reasonable cause to believe an individual has committed a crime. If the judicial judgment of probable cause was not made prior to the arrest by the issuing of a warrant or the return of an indictment by a grand jury, the arrested individual must be taken before a judicial official for a determination of probable cause. The Court has recognized a presumption that imprisonment without judicial authorisation that exceeds forty-eight hours is unlawful, notwithstanding the fact that the time period preceding this initial appearance is not precisely defined.

The hearing on probable cause need not be more complex than the procedure for issuing an arrest warrant. No official charge is required at this time, and the Supreme Court has determined that the right to counsel does not emerge until a formal charge is lodged, whether by indictment, information, or complaint. Despite this, it is normal practice to perform multiple functions at the initial court appearance if the court deems that probable cause exists. It is possible to set bail or other terms of pretrial release, to appoint counsel for the destitute, and to set a date for further proceedings.

The time between arrest and court appearance affords the police the opportunity to question the defendant in accordance with the Miranda rights. Once the suspect is represented by counsel, it is extremely improbable that he will provide information, and any questioning by the police after the defendant’s right to counsel has attached is unlawful. The Miranda right to counsel is drawn from the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, not the Sixth Amendment right to counsel at trial. If the adjudicatory process were understood to begin at the time of arrest, there would be no period of time during which the suspect’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel at trial was unprotected. In Miranda, the Supreme Court accepted the idea that counsel may be waived without an appearance in court or consultation with counsel for interrogation purposes, but has never indicated that such a waiver would be acceptable at trial.

After the arrest and judicial determination of probable cause, the prosecutor choose a charge as the next stage in the procedure. Prosecutors have a great deal of discretion in choosing charges. Consider a suspect who shot a gun at another man as an example. As the suspect was acting in self-defense, this might be deemed a non-criminal act (or because the prosecutor concludes that although the defendant was not acting in self-defense a jury might conclude otherwise). On the opposite end of the spectrum, the case could be charged with attempted murder or serious assault. It could be charged as illegal possession or discharge of a firearm or as a simple assault. The prosecutor may, but is not required to, add a charge under a recidivism statute such as the three strikes laws if the subject has prior convictions. Consequently, prosecutors have the power to expose the defendant to a spectrum of culpability ranging from zero to a large number of years.

In a considerable majority of cases, prosecutors decline to continue. In some instances, the police never anticipated a prosecution and made the arrest merely for immediate purposes of social control. For instance, the police may arrest one or both of the intoxicated individuals involved in a quarrel in order to avoid additional violence or to prevent one of the intoxicated individuals from passing out outside on a chilly night. In other instances, the police may hope for a conviction, but the prosecutor may determine that the evidence is insufficient to convince a jury.

Frequently, the prosecutor will agree to withdraw criminal charges if the defendant agrees to participate in an alternative program designed to avoid a repeat offense. The prosecution may agree to dismiss the criminal charge against a defendant charged with a drug-related or drug-induced offense if the suspect enters a drug treatment program. These so-called diversion agreements are fairly prevalent, and there is a wide array of programs to which individuals may be diverted from the criminal justice system.

Juveniles constitute a significant proportion of the arrested population. Statutorily, all U.S. jurisdictions have dedicated juvenile courts that handle both delinquency cases and activity that is legal for adults but prohibited for minors, such as drinking alcohol (status offenses). Frequently, the juvenile court has authority over child welfare proceedings as well. Generally, the applicable statutes allow adolescents suspected of committing significant offences to be transferred to the adult criminal justice system and tried as adults.

The juvenile court system contains the majority of the same steps (investigation, accusation, presentment, bail, accusation, discovery, plea bargaining, motions, trial, etc.) as the adult court system. The Supreme Court has not yet mandated that juvenile cases be tried by a jury, but the subject may be considered open for discussion in the future.

In jurisdictions that do not require indictment by a grand jury, the prosecutor may unilaterally file an information accusing the defendant of the crime or crimes pursued. Approximately half of states and the federal government require criminal cases to be indicted by a grand jury. Whether the accusation is presented in the form of an indictment or an information, its fundamental function is to enable the defendant to prepare a defense for the upcoming trial.

Typically, the grand jury is comprised of twenty-three persons who assess the prosecutor’s cases. In practice, grand juries rarely reject a prosecutor’s request for an indictment, despite having the ability to do so.

If an indictment is filed prior to the arrest, the procedure will alter slightly. The defendant will either be arrested or will turn himself in to face the charges. The procedure will then continue in the same manner as in instances that begin with an arrest, with the essential exception that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches even before an arrest. In the absence of a legitimate waiver of the right to counsel, the attendance of defense counsel is required at so-called key phases of the procedure. Interrogation, lineups, and court appearances are crucial phases. Not included are picture identification sessions, interviews with witnesses other than the defendant, or the collection or testing of physical evidence.

After the prosecutor choose a charge and files it in court, whether by indictment, information, or complaint, the next step is an arraignment at which the defendant appears to hear the charges and enter a plea. Before entering a plea, if the defendant has not yet retained or been appointed counsel, counsel must be appointed, retained, or waived in open court. Similarly, if bail has not been previously established or denied, a decision about pretrial release will be made at this time.

If the defendant and the prosecution are unable to reach a plea agreement and the matter proceeds to trial, there will normally be a discovery phase, a chance to file pretrial motions, a preliminary hearing, and a trial. The discovery procedure has expanded, but it still falls well short of what is authorized in civil cases. Fears that criminal defendants are more prone than civil litigants to harass or intimidate witnesses and the notion that the defendant’s choice not to testify unfairly transforms criminal discovery into a one-way street are the primary reasons for the disparity.

Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), is the case that established the Supreme Court’s Brady doctrine, which mandates the prosecution to provide the defense with any significant exculpatory evidence upon timely request. Typically, court rules compel both parties to reveal the names and addresses of the witnesses they want to call, allowing the opposing party to examine them prior to trial. In many countries, the defense is required to provide early notice of its plan to assert specific defenses, such as insanity, alibi, entrapment, or consent.

According to the adversarial system’s theory, justice is most likely to result from a contest in which each party prepares its own case. In practice, restricted resources weaken the validity of the idea. Most criminal defendants are represented by lawyers provided by the government. There is broad consensus that the monies available for indigent defense do not empower defense lawyers to conduct independent investigations in every instance. Caseload pressures, typically in the hundreds of felony files per attorney per year, necessitate that defense counsel select only a few cases for trial while negotiating the most favorable feasible plea arrangement for the others.

Pretrial motions may be filed for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, the following: (1) suppression of otherwise admissible evidence obtained improperly; (2) change of venue; (3) admission or exclusion of evidence; (4) compelling discovery withheld by the other side; (5) determining competence to stand trial; and (6) court appointment of expert witnesses for an indigent defendant. The court decides motions without a jury. If a finding on a motion hinges on contested facts, the court will conduct a hearing to determine the facts. Generally, pre-trial judgements are not appealable by the defense until after a conviction, but they are frequently appealable by the prosecution, as otherwise the double-jeopardy principle would bar a retrial even if the government lost the trial due to an erroneous ruling on a motion.

Similar to verdicts on motions, the court conducts the preliminary hearing without a jury. In theory, the preliminary hearing is intended to serve as both the ultimate test of probable cause for a trial and as a tool for discovery. Actual practice varies a great deal. In other instances, prosecutors present their whole case in order to induce the defense to enter a plea and to preserve the testimony of swaying witnesses. In other instances, the prosecutor may only present the minimum amount of evidence required to proceed to trial for fear of allowing the defense an opportunity for discovery.

If the defendant requests a jury trial, jury selection is the first step in the trial. In a venire, potential jurors will be summoned to court. They will be interrogated by the court, their attorneys, or both. Potential jurors will be excused if they have ties to one side or the other, or if they demonstrate an unwillingness to act impartially. Each side will have a limited number of peremptory challenges, which can be used without explanation. Typically, the defense is permitted more peremptory challenges than the prosecution. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986); Georgia v. McCollum, 502 U.S. 1056 (1992); if either party utilizes peremptory challenges to excuse potential jurors in a manner that could be regarded as racially motivated, the trial court must demand a race-neutral explanation of the peremptory challenges.

After the jury has been selected, both the prosecutor and the defense attorney may make an opening statement. The prosecution then opens its case by summoning witnesses to the stand. The defense is permitted to cross-examine their testimony. At the conclusion of the government’s argument, the defense may petition for a directed judgment of acquittal if the government’s evidence was insufficient to enable jurors to determine the elements of the alleged offense beyond a reasonable doubt.

If the government has established probable cause, the defense has the opportunity to present its case. The prosecution may not bring the defendant to the stand, and the defendant may decline to testify in his own defense. The jury is likely to believe that a defendant who refuses to testify is concealing something, but if the defendant does speak, his prior convictions can be used to undermine the credibility of his evidence. The prosecution will have the opportunity to call witnesses in a rebuttal case if the defense presents its case.

The court will next teach the jurors on the legal issues in the case, and both parties will have the opportunity to present their closing arguments. There is no consistent pattern regarding whether the instructions follow or precede the arguments of counsel. During the argument phase, the prosecution typically presents the opening argument, the defense the second, and the prosecution the closing argument.

The Supreme Court has affirmed six-member juries rather than twelve-member juries. However, the majority of jurisdictions continue to employ 12-person juries. The Supreme Court has affirmed nonunanimous jury convictions of eleven to one, ten to two, and nine to three, but many jurisdictions continue to need unanimity to convict. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court has never recognized an appeal as a constitutional right, all jurisdictions allow at least one appeal for a criminal conviction. Due to the double jeopardy provision, the government cannot appeal acquittals.

Following acquittal for an offense under the laws of a separate sovereign, the double jeopardy clause does not bar a second prosecution. Thus, an acquittal on federal charges does not preclude a subsequent prosecution under state law, and vice versa.

The trial court imposes the punishment upon the criminal upon conviction, whether by plea or after a trial. In many states, the trial judge still has the power to impose any sentence allowable by the statute, ranging from the minimum to the maximum. Typically, a presentence report made by agents of the penitentiary system informs the court’s decision. The prosecution and the defense may both recommend a punishment. Although the court is not compelled by law to accept a prosecutor’s request for a lower sentence, judges are aware that ignoring such recommendations could lessen defendants’ incentives to plead guilty. Purely discretionary sentencing regimes have been criticized for punishing convicts guilty of comparable offenses more or less severely based on arbitrary variables such as the judge’s philosophy.

In 1984, Congress passed legislation establishing the Federal Sentencing Commission and empowering it to issue sentencing guidelines for federal courts. The commission’s recommendations stipulate a suggested sentence based on the gravity of the offense and the defendant’s prior record. Cooperation with the prosecution after the commission of the crime may lessen the suggested sentence, while the use of a weapon during the commission of the felony may enhance it. The sentencing judge is permitted to deviate from the prescribed sentence, but must provide grounds for doing so, and both the prosecution and the defense may appeal any departures. The federal rules have been criticized for being excessively rigorous, particularly by federal district judges.

Many states have adopted nonbinding sentencing guidelines as a compromise between the conventional discretionary system and the more rigid federal standards. The objective of these diverse systems is to eliminate sentence inequalities without pressuring sentencing judges to reach a judgment that may not be appropriate for the particular case.

Many but not all American jurisdictions permit the execution of murderers. The Supreme Court has ruled that systems of capital punishment that provide jurors unfettered power to inflict the death penalty violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. The Supreme Court has also invalidated obligatory death penalty provisions for acts such as murdering a police officer or committing murder while serving a life sentence. The Supreme Court has ruled that the death sentence for adult rape is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Regarding murder, the Supreme Court has maintained statutory frameworks requiring the sentencing jury to discover the presence of statutorily defined aggravating elements and to weigh those factors against any mitigating considerations that may be present in each instance prior to imposing the death penalty. Typical death penalty statutes stipulate a split trial. The topic of punishment will not be considered until the issue of guilt or innocence has been determined. If the jury finds the defendant guilty during the guilt phase, the trial will go to the penalty phase, where both parties may submit evidence that was not shown during the guilt phase.

It is debatable whether the Supreme Court has truly succeeded in minimizing arbitrary decisions on the death penalty. The death sentence cannot be imposed by juries unless requested by prosecutors, and the Supreme Court has not put any restrictions on prosecution discretion to seek the death penalty. In addition, by permitting defendants to bring evidence of any relevant mitigating factor, whether authorized by legislation or not, the Court has essentially tolerated a very broad jury discretion in instances involving the death penalty. Although certain Supreme Court justices have held that the death penalty is inherently cruel and unusual, none of the current justices hold this position as of early 2001.

A convicted criminal who has exhausted all available appeals may still contest the conviction by filing a habeas corpus petition. Habeas corpus is a novel civil proceeding that challenges the legitimacy of incarceration. The defendant in a criminal case becomes the civil plaintiff, while the warden or jailer becomes the civil defendant. In 1996, Congress passed laws codifying and in some ways tightening the constraints acknowledged by the Supreme Court.

Relatively few criminal cases proceed to trial, even fewer are appealed, and even fewer are reviewed collaterally. In a significant majority of cases, prosecutors refuse to file or dismiss charges. The majority of the cases that prosecutors choose to pursue conclude not with a jury trial but with a guilty plea or a successful request to dismiss. Statistics vary by jurisdiction, but it is not uncommon for 50 percent of arrests to result in no charges or charges that are later dismissed, 80 percent of non-dismissed cases to result in guilty pleas, and the remaining cases to be tried. Typically, the government wins a substantial but not overwhelming majority of criminal prosecutions; a 70% conviction rate at trial would not be out of the ordinary.

These numbers demonstrate the prevalence of plea bargaining. The prosecution trades a decrease in the severity of the charges or the length of the suggested punishment in exchange for a waiver of the right to trial and a guilty plea to the reduced charges. Typically, both parties have valid reasons for settlement. In cases with overwhelming evidence of guilt, the prosecution can avoid the expense and duration of a trial by offering the defendant minor concessions. When the evidence is less conclusive, the government can eliminate the possibility of an acquittal by accepting a plea to a lesser charge. Because the substantive criminal law authorizes a wide range of charges and sentences for typical criminal conduct and because the procedural law gives prosecutors broad discretion in selecting charges, the prosecution can almost always provide a substantial incentive for the defense to enter a guilty plea.

A defendant who is certain to be found guilty at trial is likely to accept whatever concessions he can. The greater the government’s willingness to accept concessions, the weaker its case. The trial process typically comes into play when the parties dispute over the probable outcome of a trial. Thus, it is not surprising that a very high percentage of non-dismissed cases result in guilty pleas, although the outcomes of trials are significantly less one-sided. If 90 percent of trials resulted in convictions, more defendants would accept minimal concessions in exchange for a plea. If 90% of trials resulted in acquittals, prosecutors would make better deals or drop a greater number of cases unilaterally.

For at least three reasons, plea bargaining is problematic. First, because substantive criminal law often authorizes harsh punishments (such as the three strikes statutes), the prosecution has the ability to subject defendants to intolerable constraints. Imagine a defendant accused with petty theft who has two prior offenses. The prosecution offers to remove a three-strikes case in exchange for a guilty plea. The defendant must now choose between the possibility of a life sentence if convicted at trial, a very short term or a suspended sentence if he or she enters a guilty plea, or no sentence at all. While the Supreme Court has accepted such pleas as voluntary, they appear to be effectively compelled.

Second, the prosecution is motivated to maximize the advantage of a guilty plea in the weakest cases. The prosecution finds a guilty plea more appealing the more probable an acquittal at trial. Due to workload constraints, prosecutors may dismiss the weakest cases. In a borderline case, however, the prosecution may very easily threaten the most severe penalties against defendants who are very likely innocent.

Thirdly, the majority of criminal offenders are represented by impoverished defense attorneys who lack the means to independently research each case. Prosecutors suffer severe budget constraints as well, but in general, the government can afford to go to trial in a greater number of instances than the defense. In addition, the defense must typically choose which cases to contest based on evidence gathered by the police rather than an independent investigation. Despite these disturbing aspects, plea bargaining remains the fundamental aspect of the adjudication procedure.

The justice system arrests, prosecutes, and punishes African Americans in disproportionate proportions compared to their population representation. Some of the data are quite startling. Typically, there are fewer young black men in a state’s institutions of higher education than in prison, on probation or parole, or awaiting trial for a criminal charge. The ratio of African Americans in jail is almost four times the rate of African Americans in the general population.

The gap is reasonable to the extent that it reflects higher rates of criminal activity among blacks. Males are imprisoned, convicted, and punished disproportionately to their population share, but no one considers this disparity unfair. Since the majority of crime is intraracial, failing to prosecute black criminals will often result in inadequate protection for black victims.

For certain crimes, such as homicide, the rate of African American offenders is significantly higher than that of Caucasians. Blacks are significantly more likely to be arrested and prosecuted than whites, despite evidence from social science indicating that black and white crime rates are comparable, as with marijuana and cocaine use. Such racial discrepancies have questionable causes. Evidently, a situation in which whites were preferentially selected for arrest and prosecution despite comparable crime rates would not be acceptable on a political level.

Additionally, plea bargaining provides a unique viewpoint on the criminal justice system as a whole. The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution places considerable restrictions on police investigations and guarantees every defendant a fair trial. However, defendants may forgo police restrictions and the right to a trial, and police and prosecutors have nearly unlimited latitude in picking targets for inquiry and prosecution. The system’s defining characteristics are not due process and equal protection, but rather waiver and discretion.

If defendants were unable to waive their rights, the Constitution would oblige the system to dedicate significantly more resources to the judicial process. If prosecutors lacked the power to drop and add charges, the state would be unable to provide an incentive for defendants to forgo their rights. Because the courts have put broad constitutional constraints on criminal process while leaving the substance of criminal law practically unregulated, discretion and waiver have encouraged politicians to authorize very punitive sentences. Because prosecutors have discretion not to file every charge supported by the evidence, legislators who pass draconian punishments are aware that very few offenders will get the maximums allowed by law. In turn, lengthy possible maximum penalties provide the prosecutor with considerable leverage in plea talks.

In theory, both waiver and discretion are entirely defendable. In practice, they have provided us with not one but two criminal justice procedures. In one system, the accused enjoys the constitutionally guaranteed rights. This system is restricted to individuals who are aware of their legal rights and have the financial means to assert them. As discretion is often not applied to target these individuals, this approach is rarely utilized. The alternative system tolerates pressures that actually compel the majority of suspects to renounce their rights. Typically, defense counsel does not enter the process until after the police have concluded their investigation. Once counsel is present, defense attorneys collaborate with prosecutors to negotiate a suitable plea in a setting where the prosecution mainly dictates the terms of trade. The right to trial is generally utilized by the defense as a bargaining chip against the prosecution’s capacity to unilaterally establish the seriousness of the accusations.

A sincere perspective on the procedure does not necessitate cynicism. If defendants were unable to waive their rights, these rights would soon be drastically reduced. If prosecutors were required to file every case supported by the evidence, lawmakers would be driven to alter the substance of criminal law or pay billions of dollars for prisons. The current system enables society to maintain a robust set of procedural safeguards that could shield sophisticated defendants from politically motivated charges. Waiver reduces to a reasonable minimum the expense of these measures in terms of crime control.

The role of wealth in deciding the type of justice provided to various defendants is definitely worrisome, but it is difficult to see how this role might be abolished so long as individuals have the freedom to use their own money to defend themselves against criminal charges. By increasing the floor below which justice for the poor cannot fall, society could do much more to improve the process and minimize the inequality between the rich and the poor. This would necessitate allocating greater resources, mostly but not exclusively for indigent defense. The political will for such measures has not yet materialized.

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Crime and justice research: The current landscape and future
The contributions in this themed section developed from conversations that took place at an event hosted by the British Society of Criminology and Criminology & Criminal Justice in April 2019. The papers that follow respond to a 'think-piece' presented by Richard Sparks at that event, and engage with the subsequent debate about the future of funding for crime and justice research.
The Numbers Don't Speak for Themselves: Racial Disparities and the
Focusing specifically on policing and incarceration, we explore why simply presenting evidence of extreme racial disparities in the criminal justice system can backfire. We propose three potential strategies that may mitigate this paradoxical effect and provide important avenues for future research on how to reduce racial inequities.
The datafication revolution in criminal justice: An empirical
There is a fast-growing body of critical literature on the proliferation of datafication in the form of the data-driven models now increasingly applied in justice systems across the world for predicting risk (Angwin and Larson, 2016), forecasting crime hotspots (Ensign et al., 2018; Lum and Isaac, 2016) and implementing the biometric identification of targeted individuals (Bennett Moses and ...
The impact of technology on the criminal justice system
The criminal justice system has traditionally been slow to adopt new technologies, but recent years have seen a surge of interest and investment in technology solutions aimed at improving its ...
Reflections on Criminal Justice Reform: Challenges and Opportunities
In this essay, I offer some reflections based on my nearly 40 years of evaluating criminal justice reform efforts. 1. Go to: Part I: Waging "War". The landscape of criminal justice reform sits at the intersection of criminal behavior and legal system response. Perceptions of crime drive policy responses.
Criminal justice, artificial intelligence systems, and human rights
With the advent of big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence systems (henceforth 'AI systems'), Footnote 1 both the assessment of the risk of crime and the operation of criminal justice systems are becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated. While authors disagree whether these technologies represent a panacea for criminal justice systems—for example by ...
Cjrn :: Ssrn
It includes research on aspects of the criminal justice system - police, criminal courts, and corrections - as well as broader research in criminology. The Criminal Justice Research Network on SSRN is an open access preprint server that provides a venue for authors to showcase their research papers in our digital library, speeding up the ...
Criminal Justice Reform: A Transformative Agenda
This article's core argument is that the criminal justice system must be completely transformed in order to address its underlying issues. It contends that meaningful criminal justice reform must take place across four dimensions: (1) substantive criminal law reform; (2) sentencing reform; (3) criminal procedure reform; and (4) institutional ...
Research Guides: Criminal Justice Resources: Home
The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) is a federally funded resource offering justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide. The NCJRS Abstracts Database contains summaries of the more than 185,000 criminal justice publications housed in the NCJRS Library collection.
Criminal Justice System Research Paper Topics
Studying the criminal justice system can be fascinating and thought-provoking, as it involves the examination of the ways in which society seeks to prevent and respond to criminal behavior. In this section, we will explore ten categories of criminal justice system research paper topics, each with ten topics, that will help students to dive into ...
500+ Criminal Justice Research Topics
500+ Criminal Justice Research Topics. March 25, 2024. by Muhammad Hassan. Criminal justice is a complex and critical field that encompasses various aspects of crime prevention, law enforcement, legal proceedings, and punishment. Research plays a crucial role in understanding and addressing the challenges and opportunities in this field.
The Idea of 'The Criminal Justice System' by Sara Mayeux :: SSRN
Abstract. The phrase "the criminal justice system" is ubiquitous in discussions of criminal law, policy, and punishment in the United States — so ubiquitous that almost no one thinks to question the phrase. However, this way of describing and thinking about police, courts, jails, and prisons, as a holistic "system," dates only to the ...
Investigating Crime a Role of Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Justice
AI plays a vital role i n criminology. With the increasing amount of digital data avail able today, AI can be us ed to. analyze large datasets quickly and accurately, which can help law ...
Race, gender, class, and criminal justice: Examining barriers to
Race, Gender, Class, and Criminal Justice is a cogent examination of how these three important characteristics impact individuals at different stages of the criminal justice system. McDonald accomplishes this by taking each concept (race, gender, and class) and examining each as a separate entity to allow readers to get an in depth understanding.
Access to Justice and The Criminal Justice System: An Exploratory
The paper is an exploratory analysis of the Philippine Criminal Justice System in relation to Access to Justice. Providing people with the right to an effective remedy in each step across the ...
Improving Criminal Justice System Responses to Crime Victims with
Specifically, this paper explores ways to assist crime victims with disabilities in accessing the criminal justice system, exercising their rights as victims of crime (some of which have legal standing, while others do not), and maximizing their participation in the criminal justice process.
35 Criminal Justice Topics for Students
A PhD in Criminal Justice can prepare graduates for a number of positions, including police chief, corrections facility director, professor, and research consultant. 1. At Walden University, students pursuing a PhD in Criminal Justice can choose the General Program or one of several specializations: The courses you take and the area you ...
The effects of the justice system on mental health
The justice system as a generator of health problems and a form of institutional harassment. In every society, there are disadvantaged groups where, on the one hand, society is prioritised, and, on the other hand, the system of administration of justice is prioritised. Under this assumption the work of Athwal and Burnett ( 2014) applied to ...
PDF Research Paper on Artificial Intelligence and Criminal Justice System
AI can benefit the legal system from a scientific and evidence-processing perspective. In the case of forensic DNA testing, which over the past few decades has had a remarkable impact on the criminal justice system, this is particularly true. When committing a crime, contact with persons or items can convey biological material like blood, saliva,
PDF Artificial intelligence and criminal justice system in India: A crtical
This research paper explores the current landscape of AI applications in criminal justice, focusing on its potential benefits, challenges, and ethical implications. The paper reviews the use of AI in various stages of the criminal ... criminal justice system has the potential to revolutionize the way law enforcement agencies operate, enhance ...
Criminology & Criminal Justice: Sage Journals
Criminology and Criminal Justice is a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the broad field of criminology and criminal justice policy and practice. The journal publishes scholarly articles on all areas of criminology, crime and criminal justice. It includes theoretical pieces, as well as empirically-based analyses of policy and practice in areas that range from policing to sentencing ...
Criminal Justice Research Paper
Criminal Justice Research Paper. This sample criminal justice research paper features: 7200 words (approx. 24 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 27 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our ...
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(PDF) Understanding Criminal Behaviour Using AnyLogic
Abstract. This paper delves into the study of criminal behavior dynamics utilizing AnyLogic simulation modeling. By simulating scenarios where criminals roam dangerous districts, select victims ...
Where Are Your Parents? Exploring Potential Bias in Administrative
This paper examines potential bias in the Census Household Composition Key's (CHCK) probabilistic parent-child linkages. By linking CHCK data to the American Community Survey (ACS), we reveal disparities in parent-child linkages among specific demographic groups and find that characteristics of children that can and cannot be linked to the CHCK vary considerably from the larger population.
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Criminal justice, artificial intelligence systems, and human rights

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1 Introduction

2 How does automation change crime control?

2.2 Automation in criminal courts

2.3 Automation in prisons

3 Encounters between AI systems and the law

3.2 Human rights compliance of AI systems in the EU

3.2.1 Equality and discrimination

3.2.2 Personal data protection

3.2.3 The right to a fair trial

3.2.4 Presumption of innocence

3.2.5 Effective remedy

3.2.6 Other rights

4 Discussion: toward solutions

Acknowledgements

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500+ Criminal Justice Research Topics

Criminal Justice Research Topics

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Muhammad Hassan

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The effects of the justice system on mental health

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The South Korean experience

The justice system as a generator of health problems and a form of institutional harassment

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Criminal Justice Research Paper

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