Criminal Justice, Artificial Intelligence, and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

Abstract Ethical issues have arisen in the criminal justice context as a result of organized crime making use of high-level encryption, the Dark Web, and other cybertechnologies. However, these new technologies have also resulted in the development of a whole range of new law enforcement tools. This is turn has given rise to ethical problems such as those that have arisen as a result of law enforcement’s use of bulk databases, machine-learning techniques, and so on. Moreover, we need to look at these issues through the lens of the moral rights and principles constitutive of liberal democracy. The ethical issues addressed include ones in predictive policing, machine-learning-based legal adjudications, universal DNA databases, and facial-recognition technology. We conclude with a set of ethical guidelines for resolving some of the main issues.