Digitalisation and criminal justice

Digitalisation and criminal justice is an area of emerging interest for academics in the Centre for Criminological research, who are examining it both empirically and theoretically.

Empirical research

1. Digitalisation and police investigative interviewing of suspects

Digitalisation has had a profound impact on society and on public institutions such as the police. Increasingly police investigative interviews - including formal post-arrest interviews in police custody and ‘voluntary’ interviews outside the police station - are video-recorded through devices in specialist interview rooms or through portable body-worn cameras. This raises important questions about how the use of these devices impact on suspect rights and vulnerabilities, and criminal justice values more broadly. 

In 2019, Layla Skinns worked closely with Winnie Ng, a student at the time on the MA in International Criminology, to conduct an exploratory study of voluntary interviews at the scene of an alleged offence using body-worn cameras. This resulted in a distinction-level Master’s thesis, which has subsequently been published as a journal article in the Criminal Law Review, entitled ‘A Formal Interview Tool in an Informal Setting? An exploratory study of the Use of Body-Worn Camera at the Scene of an Alleged Crime’

2. Virtual courts

The UK have experimented with videoconferencing technology in court settings since 1999 (Young, 2011: 7). However, it is only more recently that the use of ‘live link’ technology has started to become an embedded practice within police custody suites across England and Wales. The installation of Virtual Court Technology (VCT) within police custody suites since 2009 means that a detainee can now be arrested, interviewed, charged, and remanded to prison without ever leaving the police station. The potential implications of the spatial collapse between the courts (as a site of prosecution and punishment) and the police (as a site of legal adjudication), for suspects rights (in particular, access to legal advice, appropriate adult safeguards and right to a fair trial more generally) and for police legitimacy are profound, particularly given the all-encompassing nature of police power and the physically oppressive material conditions of police custody settings (Skinns, 2019). This exploratory research will explore the impact VCT has had on police custody provision, on potentially vulnerable detainees’/defendants’ access to their due process rights, and on core criminal justice values more generally.

Conceptual frameworks

Conceptually, the aforementioned research projects are framed by two areas of scholarship which are of emerging significance in criminology and criminal justice studies. Firstly, anthropological notions of materiality, which refer to the actant-like qualities of objects and how they shape, socialise and influence who we are. In a recent All Souls talk at Oxford University, Layla Skinns has begun to explore materiality as an important framework for understanding detainee dignity in police custody and for examining the use of body worn cameras in voluntary interviews at the scene of an alleged offence (with Winnie Ng).

Secondly, Lindsey Rice has been leading the development of the concept of digital vulnerability in relation to investigative interviewing and virtual courts. It refers to the ways in which digital technology has impacted (both positively and negatively) on the vulnerabilities of suspects/citizens and on their access to due process safeguards. These digital technologies may produce distinctive risks, needs and inequalities for suspects and defendants, which warrant consideration. See Rice and Skinns (forthcoming in the British Society of Criminology Blog 2021 Blog series) for further discussion.

Last updated June 2021