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The purpose of this study is to examine public perceptions and attitudes toward using artificial intelligence (AI) in the US criminal justice system.

The authors took a quantitative approach and administered an online survey using the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. The instrument was developed by integrating prior literature to create multiple scales for measuring public perceptions and attitudes.

The findings suggest that despite the various attempts, there are still significant perceptions of sociodemographic bias in the criminal justice system and technology alone cannot alleviate them. However, AI can assist judges in making fairer and more objective decisions by using triangulation – offering additional data points to offset individual biases.

Other scholars can build upon the findings and extend the work to shed more light on some problems of growing concern for society – bias and inequality in criminal sentencing. AI can be a valuable tool to assist judges in the decision-making process by offering diverse viewpoints. Furthermore, the authors bridge the gap between the fields of technology and criminal justice and demonstrate how the two can be successfully integrated for the benefit of society.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to examine a complex societal problem like the introduction of technology in a high-stakes environment – the US criminal justice system. Understanding how AI is perceived by society is necessary to develop more transparent and unbiased algorithms for assisting judges in making fair and equitable sentencing decisions. In addition, the authors developed and validated a new scale that can be used to further examine this novel approach to criminal sentencing in the future.

The development of electronic monitoring policy over the last decade in Scotland has contributed towards its expansion and the intensification of what McNeill (2019) refers to as mass supervision. Often posited as a solution to relieve problems in the criminal justice system such as prison overcrowding and high remand populations, electronic monitoring can be punitive and problematic, exposing more people to diffused forms of social control and functioning more as a supplementary feature of prisons as opposed to a substitution for prisons. In this chapter, I explore the existing and emerging policy landscape of penal electronic monitoring Scotland, drawing upon qualitative, experiential data about being subject to and enforcing penal electronic monitoring in Scotland (see Casey, 2021) to highlight how policy is enacted in practice. Ultimately, I argue that there are fundamental issues with how electronic monitoring is currently enacted in terms of what it promises, in terms of fairness and in relation to the potential harms of integration. I call for a fundamental and holistic reframing of policy and regulation of penal electronic monitoring in Scotland that avoids siloed approaches towards policymaking, attending to both the social and digital impacts of electronic monitoring in people’s lives, thus contributing to arguments about how ‘mass supervision’ should be moderated and resisted.

This study aims to analyze corporate mail and wire fraud penalties, using bounded rationality in decision-making and assessing internal and external influences on prosecutorial choices.

The study analyzed 467 cases from 1992 to 2019, using data from the Corporate Prosecution Registry of the University of Virginia School of Law and Duke University School of Law. It examined corporations facing mail and wire fraud charges and other fraud crimes. Multiple regression linked predictor variables to the dependent variable, total payment.

The study found that corporate penalties tend to be lower for financial institutions or corporations in countries with US free trade agreements. Conversely, penalties are higher when the company is a U.S. public company or filed in districts with more pending criminal cases.

This study’s originality lies in applying the bounded rationality model to assess corporate prosecutorial decisions, unveiling external factors’ influence on corporate penalties.

Over a decade since the Special Criminal Court (SCC) was established in Cameroon, hundreds of individuals have been indicted, tried and convicted. Sentences have been imposed, most of which include a term of imprisonment (principal punishment/penalty) and confiscation as accessory penalty or punishment. Research focus has not been directed at the sentences which, as argued in this paper, are inconsistent, incommensurate with the amounts of money stolen and a significant departure from the Penal Code. This paper aims to explore the aspect of sentencing by the SCC.

To identify, highlight and discuss the issue of sentencing, the paper looks at a blend of primary and secondary materials: primary materials here include but not limited to the judgements of the SCC and other courts in Cameroon and the Penal Code. Secondary materials shall include the works of scholars in the fields of criminal law, criminal justice and penal reform.

A few findings were made: first, the judges are inconsistent in the manner in which they determine the appropriate sentence. Second, in making that determination, the judges would have been oblivious to the prescripts in the Penal Code, which provides the term of imprisonment, and in the event of a mitigating circumstance, the prescribed minimum to be applied. Yet, the default imposition of an aggravating circumstance (being a civil servant) was not explored by the SCC. Finally, whether the sentences imposed are commensurate with the amounts of monies stolen.

This research unravels key insights into the functioning of the SCC. It advances the knowledge thereon and adds to the literature on corruption in Cameroon.

The prosecution and judges at the SCC should deepen their knowledge of Cameroonian criminal law, especially on the nature of liberty given to judges to determine within the prescribed range of the sentence to be imposed but also consider the existence of an aggravating factor – civil servant. They must also consider whether the sentences imposed befit the crime for which they are convicted.

The paper is an original contribution with new insights on the manner in which sentencing should be approached by the SCC.

The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of those volunteering within a restorative justice service thus enabling an insight into their perceptions of the different methods used, their beliefs about restorative justice effectiveness, and its place within the criminal justice system. The study also sought to identify any challenges and positive experiences the participants encountered during their role as volunteers, with volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic explored specifically.

Data was collected from the participants (n = 5) via semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis, thus enabling patterns within the experience of the volunteers to be identified.

A prior understanding and interest in restorative justice was evident within the data, with participants demonstrating a preference for direct, face-to-face mediation. The perceived lack of support from external agencies was discussed along with the role of education in their volunteering experience. Finally, it was acknowledged that although face-to-face practice was deemed the most effective overall, certain practices adopted during COVID-19 enabled aspects of the role to be carried out more efficiently and equally as effectively.

The findings from this study draw out real-world implications, producing tangible action points for restorative justice services. Some tentative suggestions for future practice are outlined.

The volunteers’ role within restorative justice is often overlooked within the literature (Paul and Borton, 2013) and time constraints can add additional barriers to a hard-to-reach population. However, volunteers play a vital role in restorative justice. By exploring and listening to the volunteers’ experience, this study expands an additional strand within the literature in terms of what makes restorative justice effective and the challenges that are faced from a volunteer perspective.

Following the ‘Sarkozy’ era (2007–2012), France has engaged in ‘zero-tolerance’ policies, which have brought an increasing number of people into the criminal justice system (CJS). In an already extremely impoverished CJS, these policies have led to serious financial problems and have made an already existing prison overcrowding problem worse. Consequently, the CJS has gradually opted for a McDonald (Ritzer, 2019; Robinson, 2019) type of offender processing, whether in prosecutor-led procedures (representing roughly half of all penal procedures: Ministry of Justice, 2019) or in the sentencing phase (Danet, 2013). A similar trend has been found in probation and in prisoner release (in French: ‘sentences’ management).

The prison and probation services, which merged in 1999, have since then been in a position to benefit from the 1958 French Republic Constitution, which places the executive in a dominant position and notably allows it to draft the bills presented to a rather passive legislative power (Rousseau, 2007) and even to enjoy its own set of normative powers (‘autonomous decrees’ – Hamon & Troper, 2019). By way of law reforming (2009, 2014, and 2019 laws), the prison and probation services have thus embraced the McDonaldisation ethos. Their main obsession has been to early release as many prisoners as possible in order to free space and to accommodate more sentenced people. To do so, the prison services have created a series of so-called ‘simplified’ early release procedures, where prisoners are neither prepared for nor supported through release, where they are deprived of agency and where due process and attorney advice are removed. Behind a pretend rehabilitative discourse, the executive is only interested in efficiently flushing people out of prison; not about re-entry efficacy. As Ritzer (2019) points out, McDonaldisation often leads to counter-productive or absurd consequences. In the case of early release, the stubborn reality is that one cannot bypass actually doing the rehabilitative and re-entry work. I shall additionally argue that not everything truly qualifies as an early release measure (Ostermann, 2013). Only measures which respect prisoners’ agency prepare them for their release, which support them once they are in the community, which address their socio-psychological and criminogenic needs, and which are pronounced in the context of due process and defence rights truly qualify as such. As it is, French ‘simplified’ release procedures amount to McRe-entry and mass nothingness.

The study aimed to listen to refugee survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and/or torture and explore what justice meant to them in exile. This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. The research was funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.

Using a survivor-focussed justice lens combined with a trauma-informed approach, narrative interviews were held with 41 women and 20 men refugee survivors living in refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. The researchers also conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 key informants including refugee welfare councils, the UN, civil society, non-government and government organisations. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in the following themes being identified: no hope of formal justice for atrocities that occurred in South Sudan; insecurity; lack of confidence in transitional justice processes in Ugandan refugee settlements; abuse and loss of freedom in refugee settlements; and lack of access to health and justice services in refugee settlements.

This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. That is justice that is survivor-centred and includes elements of traditional and transitional justice, underpinned by social justice. By including the voices of both men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and getting the views of service providers and other stakeholders, this paper offers an alternative form of justice to the internationally accepted types of justice, which offer little relevance or restitution to refugees, particularly where the crime has been committed in a different country and where there is little chance that perpetrators will be prosecuted in a formal court of law.

The research findings are based on a small sample of South Sudanese refugees living in three refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. Thus, wider conclusions should not be drawn. However, the research does suggest that a “viable justice” approach should be implemented that is gender and culturally sensitive and which could also be trialled in different refugee contexts.

Improvements in refugee survivors’ dignity, resilience and recovery are dependent upon the active engagement of refugees themselves using a “survivor-focussed approach” which combines formal and community-based health services with traditional and transitional justice responses.

The provision of a “viable justice approach” ensures those who have experienced SGBV and/or torture, and their families, feel validated. It will assist them to use their internal, cultural and traditional resilience and agency in the process of recovery.

The research findings are original in that data was collected from men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and service providers. The empirical evidence supports this study’s recommendation for an approach that combines both formal and survivor-focussed approaches towards health and viable justice services to meet the needs of refugees living in refugee settlements. This is a response that listens to and responds to the needs of refugee survivors in a way that continues to build their resilience and agency and restores their dignity.

Police officers' attitudes toward their employing organizations are impacted by officers' perceptions of justice within the organization itself, and these perceptions can affect the bond that officers form with their organization. The current study explored how perceptions of three dimensions of organizational justice (i.e. interpersonal, procedural and distributive justice) were related to the affective (i.e. voluntary) organizational commitment of Chinese police officers.

The data for the current study came from a voluntary survey of 589 Chinese police officers in three areas, one each in southern, central and western China.

Based on an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression equation, interpersonal, procedural and distributive justice had similar sized positive associations with organizational commitment.

The findings support the contention that perceptions of organizational justice views are related to the commitment of Chinese police officers.

Raising the interpersonal, procedural and distributive justice views should raise the level of affective commitment of officers.

Enhancing the justice views of officers should benefit officers by treating them more fairly, as well as benefiting the police organization by increasing commitment of officers.

There has been limited research on how the different forms of organizational justice are related to officer commitment, especially among Chinese officers.