Getting the basics right

The Review starts by making it clear that there will be little effective technological innovation unless the MoJ can get the basics right. Many staff told the review that this is far from the case at the moment with many processes still paper-based, hardware that often doesn’t work and IT systems which are “outdated and clunky”.

Tagging

The review says that while electronic monitoring such as GPS tagging is used for many offenders, its effectiveness is not universal and heavily depends on how and where it is used. Monitoring and reporting technologies are also often focused on achieving compliance and the Review urges greater consideration of where technology can be integrated with existing rehabilitative interventions for offenders, such as Accredited Programmes, to achieve better levels of both compliance and rehabilitation.

Mr Gauke sets out three key principles behind his recommendations on the issue of technology:

Prioritisation: Technology should be leveraged to enable people to prioritise the work that only they can do. With stretched resources, technology such as AI can be used to free up probation officers’ time so that they can focus on where they add the most value – supporting individuals most at risk of reoffending and in greatest need of rehabilitation. Technology should not replace human interaction in the management of offenders but it should enable frontline professionals to do some of their work more efficiently.

Protecting the public: AI tools combined with other technologies such as facial recognition could be used to continuously gather and analyse real-world data on offenders, and to monitor their level of risk as it changes. This could improve probation officers’ ability to protect victims and the public through earlier 1) detection of warning signs, 2) adjustment of supervision levels, and 3) escalation interventions for support or to return individuals to court or to custody, where appropriate.

Personalisation: Management of offenders either on licence or a community sentence should be more personalised to enable offenders in different situations to be supervised and rehabilitated in the most appropriate way. For example, mobile-based rehabilitation apps and tools could be used to enable an offender to connect with the Probation Service and access information more easily, all in one place on their phone. A greater use of monitoring and sensor technologies could also be used in the future to create secure environments outside prison for offenders, which match the intensity of supervision to an individual’s level of risk and needs.

Mr Gauke does caution about the risks of embedding bias to AI models and the ethical issues of granting access to all the statutory information held about an individual because they are subject to probation.

Recommendations

Some of the Review’s recommendations in this area are bold and would require very substantial investment of additional funds. They include:

The Government should enable greater real-time monitoring of offenders (currently operational in both parts of Australia and South Korea) so that alerts can be identified and responded to more promptly, to better protect the public and victims. It is obvious that real-time tracking places significant demands on both probation and police staff who must respond to alerts, particularly in high-risk cases such as domestic abuse and stalking.

Increased use of alcohol monitoring bracelets, particularly where it can be used as an alternative to custody “alongside rehabilitative interventions to address the root causes of offending for offenders with substance misuse issues who have committed low-level offences.” 

Invest in rapid expansion of successful pilots in technology used as part of offender supervision. It should be noted that we do not yet know whether the current MoJ digital platform is effective or not.

Require all technology developed for offender management to be integrated with behavioural science. This recommendation focuses on using phone, email or smartwatch notifications to “nudge” individuals on probation toward positive behaviours such as attending court and rehabilitation sessions, or completing required check-ins.

Creating real-time feedback for probation officers and sentences. The Review says that access to real-time feedback supported by data analytics could help professionals in the criminal justice system adjust risk assessments dynamically and ensure proportionate responses.

Increased use of facial recognition. The Review recommends that the Government should consider where facial recognition technology could be integrated into specific locations or more widely in public to improve management of some offenders in the community. It does, however, recognise that we need to know more about how and why CCTV and facial recognition technology can help to reduce crime.

Improve data-sharing across agencies working with the probation service – this has been a holy grail for some time and seems unlikely to be achieved in the near future given the huge cost of an effective system which also pays attention to key ethical issues, particularly around the granting probation staff access to an individual’s health issues.

Further collaborate with industry on research and development to explore new technologies for service transformation, including advanced AI. The MoJ has already launched an “Innovation Den” to stimulate this area of work.

Conclusion

As with all the recommendations in the Independent Sentencing Review, their implementation will be dependent on the scale of funding made available. The MoJ will, like many Government Departments, have to significantly improve its ability to roll out new technology that works and to a much more rapid timescale than it has achieved to date.

Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here