Setting the parameters of ‘digital (criminal) justice’ in Scotland
| Author | Mike Nellis |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550517712625 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Setting the parameters
of ‘digital (criminal)
justice’ in Scotland
Mike Nellis
University of Strathclyde, UK
Abstract
The term ‘digital justice’ has been used by the Scottish Government to delineate the
potential of information and communication technology (ICT) in its civil, administrative
and criminal justice systems. This paper concentrates on the latter area, outlining the
content of the original 2014 digital justice strategy document and the subsequent
Holyrood conferences used to promote it (Scottish Government, 2014). It notes gaps in
the strategy, not least a failure to specify what human beings could and should be
doing in digitized justice systems, and ambiguity about the endpoint of ‘full digiti-
zation’, which could be very threatening to existing forms of professional practice. It
sets the policy debate in the broader context of increasing automation and the more
critical literature on digitization, concluding with recommendations for a revised
policy document, ideas which may be of interest outside Scotland.
Keywords
corporate futurism, cybersecurity, digital justice, disruptive innovation, surveillance
Introduction
The adjective/prefix ‘digital’ has become so ubiquitous in recent years – digital
governance, digital transformation, digital communication, digital dictatorship, etc.
– that it was only a matter of time before it was placed in front of ‘justice’, as the
Scottish Government (2014) did in a strategy document three years ago. That said,
what ‘digital’ in general signifies and what, in this context, ‘fully digitized justice
systems’ (p. 6) might entail, if indeed such an endpoint is achievable, remains
Corresponding Author:
Mike Nellis, Law School, University of Strathclyde, 16 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XQ, UK.
Email: mike.nellis@strath.ac.uk
Probation Journal
2017, Vol. 64(3) 191–208
ªThe Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0264550517712625
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
tantalizingly vague even to those constituencies whose reference point is Silicon
Valley’s and Wired magazine’s techno-utopian worldview, for whom the term is
unabashedly positive and exciting. Semantically, ‘digital’ is rightly assumed to
reference (ostensibly neutrally) computers, the internet and the complex patterns of
connectivity which global information and communication technologies (ICTs) and
mobile devices have enabled, expanded and intensified in the last 40 years
(Bentley, 2012; Ceruzzi, 2012). ‘Digital’, however, has a latent normative
dimension too, namely the cool ‘corporate futurism’ associated with Apple,
Microsoft and Google, and sundry social media companies, which proclaims
relentlessly, in word, deed and image, that the good life in the 21st century cannot
be lived without multiple and constant connection to digital devices and systems
(Goldman and Papson, 2011). Failure to aspire to, and to utilize and keep up with,
the norms, standards and vision set by these globe-spanning companies is a man-
ifest anxiety for both smaller companies and now governments too, in the contem-
porary narrative of digitization.
Such has been the scale, pace, variegated forms, depth of penetration and
disruptiveness of the so-called ‘digital revolution’ – commercially, politically, cultu-
rally – that there is still no settled, uncontested vocabulary to describe its prove-
nance, affordances, impact or future. When MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte (1996)
first spoke of ‘being digital’ (and of ‘digital lifestyles’), the terms ‘information
superhighway’ and ‘cyberspace’ were also current and seemed likely to last, but
are now passe
´(though the short form ‘cyber’ still attaches to many things, not least
‘crime’), while ‘digital’ has become the term de jour, rivalled only by ‘smart’,
although for how long can’t be certain. Terms come and go in this commercially and
intellectually dynamic field: digital seems to have superseded ‘electronic’ as a
general descriptor of evolving socio-technical practices, but ‘e-governance’ and
‘electronic monitoring’, for example, are surviving legacies of the latter’s earlier
primacy.
In public policy discussions, it is not uncommon now for officials to speak of
‘digital first’ and ‘digital by default’ approaches, indicating the centrality which ‘the
digital’ (it is now used as a noun) has to contemporary governance. With all the
above issues in mind, this paper will explore and critique Scotland’s ‘digital justice
strategy’ (Scottish Government, 2014), both the original document and the subse-
quent promotional conferences, but focusing on the implications for criminal rather
than administrative or civil justice, which it also covers. It will highlight the strategy’s
strangely narrow parameters (as if there were little more to it than enabling different
justice agencies to share relevant data electronically) and its paradoxical, simul-
taneous (and not well spelled out) expectation that the ongoing evolution of digital
technologies will commit the government to continuous organizational, cultural and
personal change. Although the strategy suggests that the quality of justice itself will
somehow be improved by digitization (e.g. by reducing delays in court for defen-
dants, victims and witnesses), it concedes that cost-efficiency in a climate of eco-
nomic austerity is the primary driver of it. Necessity, however, is entwined with
desirability: the strategy sees only promise in ‘the digital’, but no apparent down-
side. This is easily contradicted, but the strategy is worryingly silent about the impact
192 Probation Journal 64(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial