Artificial intelligence should be used to help gauge the risk of letting criminals go free or dodge prison, a government adviser has said.
Martyn Evans, chairman of the Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission, said AI would have a ‘role’ in the criminal justice system and could be used by judges making decisions about whether to jail offenders.
AI programmes could look at whether someone is safe to be released early into the community or avoid a jail term in favour of community service – despite concern over its accuracy and tendency to ‘hallucinate’ or make up wrong information.
The commission – set up by Justice Secretary Angela Constance – has proposed effectively phasing out prison sentences of up to two years and slashing the prison population by nearly half over the next decade.
Speaking to the Mail, Mr Evans, former chairman of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), said he was ‘absolutely convinced’ that AI ‘will have a role’ in risk assessment and other areas.
He said: ‘The thing is not to put all your eggs in an AI report – AI aids human insight.
‘So for criminal justice social workers having to do thousands and thousands of reports, police, procurators, it will help if you have a structured system to pull data from various sources and draft.
‘But the key for me is that AI is an aid to human reporting.
‘It will reduce the time it takes, increase some of the information available, but we know AI has faults and it can make things up.
Hellbound and Down 