MoJ’s AI Action Plan for Justice raises questions for people with criminal records

The Ministry of Justice has announced a new three-year strategy for introducing artificial intelligence across the justice system in England and Wales. The plan aims to improve efficiency and fairness throughout the justice system.

While we can see there is a clear need to tackle issues like prison overcrowding and the courts backlog, we believe it raises clear concerns for people living with criminal records.

A major concern for Unlock is the creation of joined-up digital systems linking court, prison and probation records. These so-called ‘digital offender IDs’ risk embedding a person’s past, making it even harder to move on from the long shadow of a criminal record. We are especially concerned about how data is retained and reused across departments to not only inform IDs, but to also provide information for research.

We can’t hard-code barriers into the system

“At Unlock, we already see how a criminal record follows people into every aspect of life,” said Paula Harriott, Unlock CEO.

“The rollout of AI tools must not hard-code barriers into the system; everyone deserves the chance to be seen as more than their past. We are particularly concerned about how a person’s record will be used throughout the criminal records system. For us, the idea that a child’s record might be saved and shared forever is of particular concern. Because of these concerns, we need guarantees with this action plan, that there is room for people to be allowed to reset and move on.”

Other AI tools planned include mobile phone data scanning in prisons and predictive models that assess how ‘risky’ someone is. These could be systems that could unfairly flag or label people based on outdated or biased data.

Unlock will push to ensure that any AI-driven decision-making remains transparent, challengeable and rooted in fairness and compassion. People who live under the long shadow of a criminal record should not be impacted further in the digital transformation of justice.

If you feel your digital details have been kept online for too long, please share your story with us.