Abstract
This chapter examines how forensic science and technology are reshaping crime investigation, prosecution, and the administration of criminal justice. It highlights the profound effect of new scientific techniques, data collection devices, and mathematical analysis on the traditional criminal justice system. These blur procedural boundaries that have hitherto been central, while automating and procedurally compressing the entire criminal justice process. Technological innovation has also resulted in mass surveillance and eroded ‘double jeopardy’ protections due to scientific advances that enable the revisiting of conclusions reached long ago. These innovations point towards a system of ‘automatic justice’ that minimizes human agency and undercut traditional due process safeguards that have hitherto been central to the criminal justice model. To rebalance the relationship between state and citizen in a system of automatic criminal justice, we may need to accept the limitations of the existing criminal procedure framework and deploy privacy and data protection law.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Oxford Handbook of Law, Regulation and Technology |
| Editors | Roger Brownsword, Eloise Scotford, Karen Yeung |
| Publisher | Oxford Univerity Press; Oxford |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780199680832 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2017 |